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SOMETHING MORE 



NEW GENERATION SERIES 

Something More — Kirby Page 

The Christian Task — J. Harold DuBois 

This series is being produced by a group of 
writers under thirty-five years of age, who may 
thus be regarded as members of the rising 
generation. 



SOMETHING MORE 

A Consideration 

of the Vast, Undeveloped 

Resources of Life 

KIRBY PAGE 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York: 347 Madison Avbnub 
1920 



<^':l 



-^V^-v 



Copyright, 1920, by 

The Internationai. Committee of 

YouNQ Men's Christian AssociATioNi 



jUN 12 Ibiiu 
©CU371367 

Ave I 



To 

SHERWOOD EDDY 

Whose Words and Deeds 

Have Inspired These Pages 



CONTENTS 

I. Something More in God 1 

II. Something More in Man 23 

III. Something More in Jesus Christ .... 41 

IV. Something More in Life 61 

V. Enemies of Life 73 



SOMETHING MORE IN GOD 



"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your 
ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher 
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my 
thoughts than your thoughts." — Isaiah SS-'^y 9* 

** Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find 
out the Almighty unto perfection?" — Job 11:7, 

"Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; and his great- 
ness is unsearchable. " — Psalm 14.5:3. 

**That maketh the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the 
chambers of the south; that doeth great things past finding out, 
yea, marvellous things without number. Lo, he goeth by me, 
and I see him not: He passeth on also, but I perceive him not." 
— Job q:q-ii. 

**Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot 
attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou 
art there: if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost 
parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy 
right hand shall hold me." — Psalm 139:6-10, 

"Oh, how inexhaustible are God^s resources and God's 
wisdom and God's knowledge! How impossible it is to search 
into His decrees or trace His footsteps!" — Romans 11:33 (Wey- 
mouth). 

"He who has seen me has seen the Father." — John 14:9 
(MofFatt). 



CHAPTER I 

SOMETHING MORE IN GOD 

"And Nature, the old nurse, took 

The child upon her knee, 
Saying, 'Here is a story-book 

Thy Father has written for thee/ 

*Come wander with me,' she said, 

*Into regions yet untrod, 
And read what is still unread. 

In the manuscripts of God/ 

And he wandered away and away, 
With Nature, the dear old nurse, 

Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe/' 

Man is a pilgrim. He is born with the wanderlust. 
He is always going somewhere. He is never satisfied with 
what he knows, what he has, or what he does. Never 
content with simple observation, he seeks an explanation 
of the why and whence of the phenomena about him. 
Never content with present possessions, he seeks to ex- 
tend his sway into new realms. Never content with the 
manner in which he does things, he seeks new ways of 
fulfilling cherished desires. He is ever venturing forth 
into unknown regions. In realms of thought and action, 
he is constantly endeavoring to discover the something 
more that lies all about him. 

In spite of man's search throughout the ages, many 
marvels of nature have baffled him or have remained 
undiscovered until recent years. Long before the days 

3 



Something More 



of the Psalmist and the astrologers of ancient Egypt, men 
saw the lightning flash in the heavens. Yet it remained 
for Benjamin Franklin to note the relation between light- 
ning and electricity. And most of the advances in this 
sphere have been made by men who are still alive. The 
Aztecs and the Babylonians witnessed the effects of elec- 
trical discharges, but not until our own time has the 
world been linked together by the telegraph and the 
telephone, and night turned into day by the electric 
light. Only recently has it been demonstrated that written 
messages may be transmitted thousands of miles by means 
of the writing-telegraph. Professor Korn and Mr. Thorne- 
Baker have just now perfected a mechanism by means of 
which it is possible to send sketches and photographs by 
telegraph. 

The ancient dwellers in the valleys of the Euphrates 
and the Nile breathed air that was identical in its elements 
with that inhaled by the modern inhabitants of the Miss- 
issippi Valley. Yet it was less than two decades ago that 
a nineteen-year-old boy on his father's farm near Bologna, 
Italy, discovered how to send messages through the air 
without the use of wires. Now messages are daily sent 
to all parts of the world by means of wireless telegraphy. 
The present writer well remembers that during a recent 
voyage from Liverpool to New York, while in mid-Atlantic 
a wireless message was picked up to the effect that the 
price of doughnuts in the restaurants of Chicago had 
been increased sixty-six per cent. 

Only recently have we heard of the invention by 
Mr. James Harris Rogers of an underground radio system 
by which wireless messages may be sent and received 



Something More in God 



underground or through water without the use of aerials. 
It IS said that with the apparatus installed in his home in 
Hyattsville, Maryland, Mr. Rogers has received messages 
from Berlin, Paris, and Rome. 

Primitive men knew how to communicate with each 
other at a distance by means of beacon fires, but only 
within recent months has it been found possible to convey 
the human voice thousands of miles by means of the 
wireless telephone. A message was sent by wireless tele- 
phone from Arlington, Virginia, and distinctly under- 
stood and recorded in Honolulu, nearly 5,000 miles away. 
Wireless telephone messages are now sent from rapidly 
moving passenger trains to distant railway stations. 
Recently it has been demonstrated that it is possible for 
aviators in flight to keep constantly in communication 
with persons on the ground by means of the radio-tele- 
phone. 

The warriors of old knew how to make music with the 
tom-tom and the drum, but it was only a short time ago 
that Dr. DeForest discovered that it was possible to make 
music by sending electric currents through glass bulbs. 
He has now perfected what he calls the Oscillion Organ. 
With varying electric currents operated by switches, this 
organ can be made to imitate the cornet, the flute, the 
oboe, and various stringed instruments; indeed, the 
Oscillion Organ is a whole orchestra in itself. 

Nothwithstanding the really marvelous progress that 
has been made in the realm of electricity, it is the 
unanimous opinion of all scientists that we are only on the 
threshold of this science. Little more is known of elec- 
tricity than the information contained in the definition 



Something More 



given by the new motorman: "Electricity is the juice 
that makes the car go/' Thomas A. Edison says: "I 
believe we are only beginning, that we have scarcely 
started, we have only scratched the surface/* And Tesla 
says: *'What has been done so far in electricity is as 
nothing compared with what the future has in store for us/' 

There is something more on ahead, and within the 
next few decades that which now seems impossible will 
be commonplace. We are confidently told by the men who 
know most in this realm that we shall soon be able to see 
the person to whom we are speaking over the telephone. 
It will not be long, we are informed, before all of our 
houses and apartments will be heated exclusively by 
electricity. One scientist has said that the day will soon 
come when tub and shower baths will no longer be found 
in our homes, being supplanted by the more cleanly, 
sanitary, and invigorating electric bath. 

Just a few months ago Mr. Weagant announced that 
he had discovered how to remove the static from the 
atmosphere. All electricians are agreed that when once 
this problem of the static is solved, there will be practically 
no limits to the effective uses of wireless telegraphy and 
telephony. Within a few years the purchasing agent of 
Tiffany in a Fifth Avenue office may be able to pick up 
his radio-telephone and say: "Please give me wireless 
long distance. Give me South Africa, Kimberly Mine 
826-J." Within a few minutes he may be placing an 
order for diamonds with his distant agent and may re- 
ceive them within a few days by aeroplane express. 

Tesla says that within a few years it will be possible 
to illuminate the ocean by means of artificial sheet light- 



Something More in God 



ning. He also believes that by means of electricity it will 
soon be possible to control the rainfall. He predicts that 
shortly we shall have a typewriter electrically operated 
solely by the human voice. 

It seems certain that within this century the dwellers 
in interior Tibet, the jungles of Africa, and the most in- 
accessible places of the earth, will be enjoying many 
luxuries produced by electricity of which even the civilized 
world is now altogether ignorant. 

For many centuries chemists have been searching for 
new elements, but it was only twenty years ago that the 
most wonderful of all known elements was discovered by a 
Polish woman, Madame Curie, in Paris. Unceasingly 
radium gives out heat, light, electricity, and X-rays. **One 
atom of radium contains energy enough to keep a clock 
ticking for a hundred years. '^ One ounce of radium gives 
off enough energy to lift ten billion pounds thirty feet. 
If it were possible to gather together a single pound of 
radium, its energy would be sufficient literally to tear 
the flesh off every person within a hundred feet. 

"Every now and then,'* says Sir Oliver Lodge, "an 
atom of radium explodes or fires off a projectile — ^what is 
called an 'A* particle. During the time taken by a rifle bul- 
let to fly without resistance from the muzzle of a rifle to a 
target 300 yards away, the ^A' particle simultaneously 
shot off from the radium would have traveled the 3,000 
miles from London to New York. The time needed is 
only a quarter of a second. And as to the energy of such 
a projectile, weight for weight, it is 400,000,000 times 
more energetic than a bullet.** 

Radium gives off three kinds of rays. Of these the 
Gamma rays are sufiiciently powerful to penetrate twelve 



8 Something More 



inches of steel plate. When encased in covers of glass, 
gutta-percha, steel tubing, three sheets of copper, one 
millimeter of silver, and ten centimeters of water, these 
rays penetrate with suifficient force to cause a diamond to 
glow in the dark. So powerful are these rays that even 
the blind are able to detect them. Radium has been used 
with marvelous success in the cure of cancer and skin 
diseases and even with tuberculosis. 

Mr. G. W. C. Kaye says: *^ Radium is the most amaz- 
ing and revolutionary substance ever known to man." 
And Professor Venable remarks: *^The total amount of 
energy pent up in a single atom of radium almost passes 
our powers of conception.'* And yet it is necessary for 
Professor Baskerville to admit: *^We are only on the 
threshold of a full knowledge of this marvel.'* And 
Dr. Bissell says: *^Its powers are still more or less un- 
known.'* 

Up to the present time only exceedingly small quan- 
tities of radium have been separated from other elements. 
So rare is radium that it sells for more than $2,000,000 
an ounce. It is found in pitchblende, carnotite, lava, and 
various ores throughout the earth. Professor Joly es- 
timates that there are 20,000 tons of radium in solution 
in the waters of the sea, while 1,000,000 tons are lying 
on the ocean floor. It is reasonably certain that within 
the near future very much larger quantities of radium 
will be available for more extensive experimentation, and 
that soon we shall know more of its marvels. 

It is entirely possible that the scientist of tomorrow 
may discover a new element many fold more powerful 
and marvelous than radium. At present we know only a 



Something More in God 



few of Nature's secrets of power. There is something 
more on beyond. 

The eyesight of the savage hunter was vastly keener 
than that of the flat-dweller in a modern city. But the 
primitive huntsman was confined within the limits of 
natural eyesight, while your modern man has access to 
high-powered microscopes and telescopes. 

It is now possible to determine the actual shape of a 
particle only one-two hundred and fifty millionth of an 
inch in diameter. By means of the spectroscope it is 
possible to prove the presence of one part of sodium vapor 
in 20,000,000 parts of air. 

It was only a few score years ago that the molecule 
was the smallest quantity of matter conceivable by scien- 
tists. It is now an accepted fact in science that each 
molecule is made up of one or more atoms, while each 
atom contains not less than 30,000 electrons. In a space 
as broad as one's little finger-nail 200,000,000 molecules 
could be placed side by side, or a total of 12,000,000 million 
electrons within that space. In half a thimbleful of air 
there are 3,600,000,000,000,000,000 electrons. 

"Within this tiny molecule lies hidden a whole uni- 
verse in ceaseless and terrific movement,'* the electrons 
revolving at a speed of 100,000 miles a second. It seems 
difficult to believe that just beneath the point^of our pen 
as we write upon the smoothest linen there is a veritable 
maelstrom of swiftly moving particles. And yet this is a 
sober fact of science. 

In spite of the marked advance in this sphere, Dr. 
Geoffrey Martin, of London University, says: "Little is 
known at present regarding the mutual attraction of the 



10 Something More 

atoms for each other, and no doubt in this field many of the 
great discoveries of the future will be made. The subject, 
in fact, is in its infancy/* 

Man has studied the stars for ages and yet his knowl- 
edge of them is very incomplete. We know that the size 
and distance of the stellar bodies are vast beyond powers 
of imagination. ^^The late Royal Astronomer of Ireland, 
in a book published just before his death, gives it as his 
opinion that there are at least 30,000,000 stars or suns, 
each one the center of a planetary system, averaging 
perhaps ten planets apiece; which means, according to his 
estimate, that there are 300,000,000 worlds in this uni- 
verse, the majority of them vastly larger than the planet 
upon which we live.'* According to Gore, the star Arc- 
turus has a mass 500,000 times that of our sun, and is 
12,000,000 times as far from the earth as is our sun. Our 
sun placed at this distance could not be seen with an 
opera glass. According to Newcomb, the amount of 
light emitted by Canopus and Rigel is certainly thous- 
ands, probably hundreds of thousands that emitted by 
our sun. 

It is stated on high scientific authority that one of the 
nebulae, or luminous clouds, which to the naked eye ap- 
pears to be about five times as large as the moon, is at 
least 46,500,000,000,000 miles in diameter, or 500,000 
times the sun*s distance from the earth. Light traveling 
at the rate of 186,000 miles a second would require eight 
years to pass from one side of this nebula to the other; 
a train moving at a mile a minute would require 90,000,000 
years to cover the same distance. More than 10,000 of 
these nebulae have been cataloged, and it is thought that 



Something More in God 11 

the total number must reach into the hundreds of thou- 
sands. 

It is believed that our atmosphere does not extend 
more than a few hundred miles above the earth. Beyond 
this it is believed that there is only the all-pervasive ether, 
which we cannot see, hear, taste, smell, exhaust, weigh, 
or measure. And yet we know it must be there because 
of the phenomena which are inexplicable without it. 
"It must be a thousand times as rigid as our hardest 
substance in order to transmit light at the velocity of 
186,000 miles a second, and yet it offers no resistance to 
the planets as they move through it.^* Sir Oliver Lodge 
says: "Every cubic millimeter of the universal ether of 
space must possess the equivalent of a thousand tons, and 
every part of it must be squirming internally with the 
velocity of light. '* It is utterly different from any known 
thing, and affords a vast field for exploration. 

We must confess with Immanuel Kant: "We are 
living in a world which is but a little island of the known, 
washed on every shore by the vast waters of the unknown.'* 
Sir Oliver Lodge exclaims: "The universe we are living in 
is an extraordinary one; and our investigation of it has 
only begun.'* 

In spite of the vast increase in human knowledge, 
many eminent scientists have reached the conclusion that 
there are great and fundamental problems which can 
never be solved by means of pure science. So Tillman 
says: 

"Above and below the narrow zone of the visible are 
objects too far off and too fine for human scrutiny. Al- 
though the 'seeming air is rounded by intimations of 



12 Something More 

other and brighter regions, Science can never compass 
them by any extension of her domain. In these unsounded 
depths which form the boundary and the background 
of the known, thought, grown dizzy, finds no support/* 

And in this connection the great scientist Dr. Geoffrey 
Martin says: 

"It must be boldly confessed that Science, in spite of 
her great discoveries, is completely in the dark as regards 
the object and drift, the why and wherefore, of all the 
great workings of nature. In spite of all the enormous 
advances of Science within the last few centuries, we are, 
apparently, as far as ever from the solution of the great 
mystery of life itself. ** 

The little we do know, however, compels us to believe 
that Law and Order prevail throughout the universe. 

**In all directions the process of evolution has been 
discovered,** says John Fiske, "working after similar 
methods, and this has forced upon us the belief in the 
Unity of Nature. The whole tendency of modern science 
is to impress upon us the truth that the entire knowable 
universe is an immense unit, animated throughout all its 
parts by a single principle of life. The element of chance 
is expelled. Nobody would now waste his time in theoriz- 
ing about a fortuitous concourse of atoms. We have so 
far spelled out the history of creation as to see that all 
has been done in strict accordance with law. So beautiful 
is all this orderly coherence, so satisfying to some of our 
intellectual needs, that many minds are inclined to doubt 
if anything more can be said of the universe than that 
it is a Reign of Law.** 

A remarkable instance of this reign of law is to be 
found in the discovery made by the Russian chemist 
Mendeleev. Through what has come to be known as the 



Something More in God 13 

periodic law, he was enabled in 1871 to foretell the ex- 
istence and even the properties of several unknown chemi- 
cal elements, which have since been discovered. His 
prophecy was fulfilled in a remarkable way by the finding 
of the element gallium by Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, 
the finding of scandium by Nilson in 1879, and the finding 
of germanium by Winkler in 1886. In each case the ele- 
ment discovered corresponded in an amazing way with 
the prediction of Mendeleev. 

The presence of this reign of law made it possible for 
Leverrier by laborious calculations to predict the dis- 
covery of a new planet and to tell where it might be found. 
Within a few days, the planet Neptune was discovered 
within one degree of the spot indicated by Leverrier. 

"A still more impressive illustration of the unity of 
Nature,^' says John Fiske, "is furnished by the lumin- 
iferous ether, when considered in connection with the dis- 
covery of the correlation of forces. The fathomless abysses 
of space can no longer be talked of as empty; they are 
filled with a wonderful substance, unlike any of the forms 
of matter which we can weigh or measure. A cosmic jelly, 
almost infinitely hard and elastic, it offers at the same 
time no appreciable resistance to the movement of the 
heavenly bodies. It is so sensitive that a shock in any 
part causes a tremor which is felt on the surface of count- 
less worlds. Thus every part of the universe shares in 
the life of all the other parts, as when in the solar atmos- 
phere, pulsating at its temperature of a million degrees 
Fahrenheit, a slight breeze instantly sways the needles 
in every compass-box on the face of the earth. 

"Still further striking confirmation is found in the 
marvellous disclosures of spectrum analysis. To whatever 
part of the heavens we turn the telescope, armed with 
this new addition to our senses, we find the same chemical 



14 Something More 

elements with which the present century has made us 
familiar upon the surface of the earth. From the distant 
worlds of Arcturus and the Pleiades, whence the swift ray 
of light takes many years to reach us, it brings the story 
of the hydrogen and oxygen, the vapor of iron or sodium, 
which set it in motion. Thus in all parts of the universe 
that have fallen within our ken, we find a unity of chemical 
composition. Nebulae, stars, and planets are all made of 
the same materials, and on every side we behold them in 
different states of development. Matter is indestructible, 
motion is continuous, and beneath both these universal 
truths lies the fundamental truth that force is persistent. 
The events of the universe are not the work of chance, 
neither are they the outcome of blind necessity. Prac- 
tically there is a purpose in the world whereof it is our 
highest duty to learn the lesson.^' 

In like tone the great naturalist, John Burroughs, 
says: "It would seem as if all nature were permeated with 
mind or mind stuff. As science has to assume the existence 
of an all-pervasive ether to account for many phenomena, 
so it appears to me that we have to postulate the universal 
mind to account for what we find around us.^* 

*^It seems clear that evolution can hardly be carried 
through in the biological and human realm without tel- 
eology or purposiveness,** says Professor E. W. Lyman. 
"This purposiveness is not single and external, like the 
mind of an architect working upon building material. 
It is manifold and immanent. But the very fact that it is 
there, and that its significance constantly increases as 
evolution goes on, shows that, just so far, the world is of 
the kind that we should expect if one immanent, purposeful, 
creative Spirit were active in it throughout. Mechanism 
remains as a useful working hypothesis for guiding detailed 
discovery, but wherever we find growth and organization 
we need the teleological principle, and the more we find 
that principle operative in nature and history, the more 



Something More in God 15 

we are justified in concluding that the whole is character- 
ized by growth and organization, and so is dependent on 
an Immanent Mind/* 

By what name shall we call this animating principle 
of the universe, this source of all phenomena? Some call 
It Force or Energy or Mind, others call it God. Some call 
this idea a working hypothesis, others call it Faith. "The 
Deity revealed in the process of evolution is the ever- 
present God, without whom not a sparrow falls to the 
ground and whose voice is heard in each whisper of con- 
science, even while his splendor dwells in the white ray 
from yonder star that began its earthward flight while 
Abraham's shepherds watched their flocks.'* 

The supreme need of the world today is for a true 
conception and a deeper knowledge of God. Man's whole 
life is affected by what he thinks of God. The Hindu 
mother tosses her baby to the crocodiles, the devout 
pilgrim mutilates his body, the pious monk retires to the 
wilderness, the martial Moslem massacres the unbelieving, 
the consecrated missionary lays down his life for his enemy 
— all of these deeds are founded on varying conceptions 
of God. 

"Today, as in every age," says Dr. John Herman 
Randall, "earnest men are crying out, just as the old 
French iconoclast Diderot cried out to the Church of his 
day, that was stifling truth and binding it fast with fetters, 
'Release your God,' or in other words, Enlarge your con- 
ception of God'." 

It is illuminating to recall that the man of all men 
who impresses us by his knowledge of God, never under- 
takes to prove God's existence or personality. Jesus 



16 Something More 

Christ simply assumes these things, takes them for granted, 
uses them as the basis for all choices, words, and deeds. 
Jesus assumes the widom, power, love, and accessibility 
of God. Without attempting to prove these attributes, 
he simply acts as if their truth were beyond dispute. In 
every outward circumstance, he sees evidences of the 
validity of his faith in God. 

Jesus never doubts the wisdom of God. He is per- 
secuted, insulted, buffeted, crucified, yet he retains his 
trust in God. Even in seeming defeat and failure, he does 
not doubt God's wisdom, but says, "Thy will, not mine, 
be done.** He calmly asserts that "with God all things 
are possible." Not once does he doubt God's power to 
preserve him or to enable him to do God's will. In spite 
of outward appearance, he goes forward with the stead- 
fast conviction that he is in God's care. The love of God 
IS the cornerstone of Jesus' life. It is the central theme of 
his message. It gives tone and balance to all that he does. 
He uses the human word Father as the title which best 
expresses God's attitude toward men. Jesus assumes that 
God is near and accessible. He talks with God as naturally 
as with his friends. He spends many hours in simple 
communion with God, and from these hours of fellowship 
he receives guidance, strength, and hope. 

Jesus begins his ministry with certain assumptions 
regarding God. Through years of intense persecution and 
suffering, he makes practical and most searching tests of 
his faith In God. Not once does his hypothesis fail. Always 
he finds God true. The greatest certainties In his life are 
the wisdom, power, love, and accessibility of God. 

Our deepest need Is that we may know God. This 



Something More in God 17 

we can do only as we fulfill certain conditions. No hypo- 
thesis can be tested and found true unless the necessary 
conditions are first met. Jesus knows God because he 
fulfills all conditions of such knowledge. Three conditions 
at least, must be fulfilled if we are to know God in any 
true sense: 

1. We must earnestly seek God. He never thrusts 
himself upon us. He stands outside the door of our lives, 
but it is for us to decide whether he shall enter and dwell 
with us. He longs to reveal himself more fully to us, but 
is hindered by our indiflPerence and antagonism. Admiral 
Peary found the North Pole because he earnestly sought it. 
He made this search the central purpose of his life, setting 
aside projects which he regarded as less significant. Not 
until our search for God becomes the dominant and over- 
whelming factor in our lives, can we hope truly to find 
him. We shall not know God intimately until we hunger 
and thirst for him. 

Seek God in the world about you. Break away oc- 
casionally from the deadly pressure and crushing routine 
of the shop and office. Get out into the open air and behold 
evidences of God's handiwork. Wander beside inviting 
streams, beneath the restful shade of green trees, drink 
sparkling water from bubbling springs, smell the fragrant 
perfume of beautiful flowers, listen to the melodious songs 
of many birds, sit by the shore of quiet lakes and the 
surging sea, tramp across rugged hills and climb high 
mountains. See God at work all about you. Forsake the 
crowded theater, the stifling dance hall, the endless 
round of social pleasures. Stand alone in the stillness of 
the night, gaze long into the heavens, let the twinkling 



18 Something More 

stars and silvery moon stimulate thought and deepen 
meditation. Find God. / 

Seek God in the work you do. Realize that to J^erform 
any honest and useful labor, whether it be physical or 
mental, is to enter into partnership with God. Keep in 
mind that the purposes of the ever active and creative 
God cannot be fully accomplished without the continuous 
cooperation of each of his children. No longer regard your 
daily task as mere drudgery, a sort of necessary evil, the 
price to be paid for things desired. Look upon your work 
as the high privilege of entering into creative activity with 
your Father, in making it possible for all men to enjoy 
abundant life. **My Father worketh even until now, and 
I work. ^^ 

Seek God in the person of the historic Jesus. Read 
the record again and again. Live in the presence of Jesus, 
share his attitude and viewpoint, catch his spirit, see in 
him God incarnate in human flesh. 

Commune with God in solitude, listen to his still 
small voice speaking to your inner soul, unburden yourself 
to him, enjoy his companionship, respond to his call. 
Seek and you will find. 

2. It takes time to know God. True knowledge of him 
is not to be gained in " Six Easy Lessons. '* The deeper secrets 
of nature and of God are not discovered easily. Edison 
once made over 15,000 tests before he found the desired 
combination. On another occasion he found the missing 
link after 10,000 trials. He has worked eighteen and twenty 
hours a day for weeks at a time, scarcely stopping even 
to eat or to sleep. It is no wonder he exclaimed: "Genius 
is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent per- 



Something More in God 19 

spiration." Luther Burbank has had as many as 3,000 
experiments in operation at one time, and on a twenty-two 
acre plot has made more than 100,000 experiments. Here- 
in lies the secret of his marvelous success. 

Jesus knows God because he takes time to seek him. 
Early and late, throughout all hours of the day and night, 
Jesus seeks God and talks with him. Only those followers 
of Jesus who have spent hours in conscious communion 
with God have really known him. Herein is found an 
explanation of the knowledge of God and faith in him of 
such men as David Brainerd, William Carey, Hudson 
Taylor, David Livingstone, and a multitude of others. 

Our day contains as many hours as that of Jesus or of 
any of his followers. If we are sufficiently in earnest in 
our desire to find God, we will take the time necessary to 
pursue this search. Our use of the twenty-four hours in 
the day is determined by our scale of values. Judged by 
our present use of time, do we really desire to know God .? 

We should not expect to know God fully in a week, 
a month, or a year. An infant or a youth does not fully 
understand his father. Knowledge grows with the com- 
panionship of years. Each year of close communion with 
God brings about a deepening knowledge of Him. 

3. Only the pure in heart find God, Impure thoughts, 
motives, and deeds are the great barriers that separate us 
from God. Where intellectual doubts stand between one 
man and God, moral difficulties hide God from a thousand 
men. Our impurities blind us to the presence of God. 

We cannot hope to find God until first we are filled 
with an overwhelming desire to be free from impurity. 
Impure thoughts, motives, and deeds cease to be trival 



20 Something More 

affairs when we recall that they prevent any deep com- 
panionship with God. If we really wish to know God and 
to enjoy his fellowship, we must make a strenuous effort 
to be pure in heart. We must cry with agonizing earnest- 
ness, ** Create within me a clean heart, O GodT* 

"Yea, only as the heart is clean 
May larger vision yet be mine 
For mirrored in its depths are seen 
The things divine.'* 

If we make a serious attempt to fulfill these three 
conditions, we shall find vastly more in God than we have 
dreamed. An earnest search for God, sufficient time given 
to the search, an intense effort to be pure in heart, these 
will bring a more vivid consciousness of God's wisdom, 
power, love, and accessibility. God will then become our 
greatest reality in life, and we shall turn to him as nat- 
urally as we breathe. 

There is something more in God. Our present know- 
ledge of him is very meager indeed. Yet we do know 
enough to begin our search for him. We are surrounded by 
a great cloud of witnesses in many lands throughout 
many centuries, who agree in testifying to the deeper 
knowledge, greater faith, and dynamic power that come 
when the necessary conditions are fulfilled. 

"Acquaint thyself with God if thou wouldst taste 
His works. Admitted once to His embrace. 
Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before; 
Thine eye shall be instructed, and thine heart, 
Made pure, shall relish with divine delight 
Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.'* 



Something More in God 21 

Those persons, in all ages and in all lands, who have 
accepted these assumptions of Jesus regarding the wisdom, 
power, love, and accessibility of God, who have acted as 
if they are true, and who have put them to the test of 
actual experience in their own lives, have found God to be 
the great reality of life. 



SOMETHING MORE IN MAN 



"As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, 
so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone: 
and the place thereof shall know it no more. " — Psalm 103:1 Sy ^6. 

"Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man 
is renewed day by day." — // Corinthians 4:16. 

"Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." — 
Romans 12:2. 

" Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new 
man." — Ephesians 4:23, 24, 

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." 
— Isaiah 40:31. 

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put 
within you. " — Ezekiel 36:26. 

" Behold, I make all things new. " — Revelation 21:5. 

**If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things 
are passed away; behold, they are become new." — // Corin- 
thians j://. 

"But we all, with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror [mar- 
gin] the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image 
from glory to glory. " — // Corinthians 3:18. 

"Now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest 
what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we 
shall be like him." — / John 3:2, j. 



CHAPTER II 
SOMETHING MORE IN MAN 

Within man is a vast store of latent energy. Con- 
stantly throughout ages past he has been tapping new 
reservoirs of power. Few studies are more fascinating 
than the tracing of his progress through the centuries. 
It is a far cry from the cave-man of early historic times 
to the highest type of modern man. 

Physically, man is far more powerful today than ever 
before. This may not be true in terms of avoirdupois 
and muscular strength. But while primitive man relied 
on his club and spear or bow and arrow for protection and 
victory over his foe, the present-day soldier has access 
to guns with a range of sixty miles. While the assailant 
of old had only his rude battering ram, the modern siege gun 
hurls on its way of destruction a missile of a ton in weight. 
No longer is a general content to surround his foes and to 
starve them into submission. He sinks his tunnel be- 
neath them, sets his mine, and blows them into atoms, 
Hannibal and Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, would 
have stood in awe before the vast explosion at Messines 
Ridge on June 7, 1917, when the British General Staff set 
off simultaneously nineteen gigantic mines, containing 
a million pounds of aminol. When the smoke cleared 
away it was seen that the villages of Messines and Wys- 
chaete had vanished and Hill 60 had been converted into 
a huge crater. 

The primitive man may have been swifter of foot and 
possessed of more endurance than the man of today. But 

25 



26 Something More 

the swiftest of ancient couriers and marathon runners 
sink into insignificance when compared with the messenger 
of today. The modern courier rides in a luxurious express 
train that rushes across a great continent in four days; 
or he boards an ocean liner that crosses the Atlantic in 
less than six days; or if his mission is a secret one, he may 
descend into the depth of the sea in a submarine and be 
safely carried 3,000 miles. If there is urgent need of haste, 
he may fasten himself to the seat of an aeroplane and 
speed across the Atlantic in sixteen hours. 

Man has made progress in the manner in which he 
obtains his food. Primitive man subsisted on raw meat 
from the animals he could kill with his rude weapons, and 
on the roots and bark of trees and whatever berries or 
fruits might be obtainable. Perhaps the greatest delicacy 
on the table of many primitive men consisted of certain 
choice morsels from the roasted body of a slain enemy. 
After a long period, man began to domesticate animals 
and to depend upon the flock and herd for support, and 
still later he began to till the soil after a rude fashion. 
Throughout the centuries man has been increasing the 
efiiciency of his farming implements and has been ex- 
perimenting with fertilizers, intensive cultivation, and 
cross-breeding of plants, until today he has an endless 
variety of food at his disposal. The progress in this di- 
rection may be illustrated from the accomplishments of a 
single individual. 

Luther Burbank has changed the size, shape, color 
and taste of hundreds of varieties of fruits, vegetables, 
ajid flowers. The Burba;nk potato yields four times as 
much per acre as the best potato hitherto known. By 



Something More in Man 27 

grafting, cross-pollenizing, and fertilizing, he has pro- 
duced numberless varieties of apples, pears, peaches, 
apricots, plums, prunes, cherries; a plum that looks and 
tastes like an apple; another that tastes like a Bartlett 
pear; seedless plums and prunes; sugar prunes with twenty- 
three per cent sugar content; a plumcot combining the 
qualities of the plum and the apricot ; cherries that leave the 
stone on the tree when picked; a blackberry that is pure 
white; Himalaya blackberries that produce 100 pints a 
season from a single plant; blackberry vines that are 
free from thorns; walnut trees with an extremely rapid 
growth; dwarf chestnut trees that bear large nuts at six 
months from the seed. Not least of his achievements, 
he has changed the desert cactus with its long and danger- 
ous spikes into the spineless cactus, with its crop of 100 
tons of edible fruit per acre and with a fodder crop five 
times as prolific as corn fodder. 

Man has made similar progress mentally. The in- 
tellectual life of primitive man was very simple. Such 
ideas as he had came directly from physical sensations. 
He was incapable of deep reflection and abstract thinking. 
His mental life was devoted primarily to self-preservation 
and propagation. His language was crude and contained 
only a few words. His written language was a series of 
signs and pictures upon stones and skins. 

So great has been man's progress that today all civil- 
ized nations have their great universities, with highly 
trained specialists, who devote a lifetime to the study of 
some minute detail of a particular department. His ideas 
have become so extended and complex that hundreds of 
thousands of words are necessary to give expression to 



28 Something More 

his thoughts, and Hbraries with millions of volumes con- 
tain only a fraction of his written convictions. Countless 
printing presses are daily grinding out tons of newspapers, 
periodicals, and books, and the knowledge of the average 
man on the street is incomparably higher than that of the 
eminent scholar of a few centuries ago. 

Man has also made progress socially. His earliest 
interest was mere self-preservation. He was to a large 
degree independent. He killed his own game, erected his 
own rude shelter, and looked after himself. Later he 
became interested in his family, his tribe, and his nation. 
The earliest authority was the word of the strongest 
warrior, the head of the family or the tribe, the medicine 
man or the witch doctor. 

With the vast increase in population, man's social 
relations have become correspondingly complex. An 
individual today is under the authority of a multitude of 
officials — city, county, state, national, and international — 
and his conduct is prescribed in countless statutes and 
unwritten laws and by public opinion. He is no longer 
isolated and independent. He is in direct contact with 
many nations, and is debtor to the whole world. His 
dinner is brought to him from several continents, hundreds 
of men have had a share in the making of the clothes 
which he wears, and for the comfortable residence which 
shelters him, he is indebted to a multitude of skilled 
mechanics and unskilled laborers. The medium of ex- 
change is no longer skins and pelts, but credit — promises 
in the form of notes, checks, mortgages, and the like. Man's 
ingenuity has shown itself in the way in which he has 
adapted himself to an increasingly complex environment 



Something More in Man 29 

and in the high success he has attained in the conduct of 
his social relations with his fellows. 

Ethically and morally, man has also made progress. 
From the earliest dawn of recorded history strong men 
made slaves of the weak. Even as late as the time of the 
Roman Empire there were three slaves for every citizen. 
Primitive man regarded woman much as he did a slave 
or an animal, an instrument through which his comfort 
and pleasure might be increased. She was the common 
property of the tribe, and promiscuous sexual relations 
were practiced. Even after each man had his own wife 
or wives, these wives were procured by abduction or 
purchase. The woman had no choice in the matter. 
One has only to contrast this situation with the present 
status of woman to note the progress which has been made. 
She is now regarded not only as the equal of man but is 
chivalrously treated as his superior, and has complete 
power of choice as regards marriage. Contrast the former 
custom of exposing infants, the aged, and the helpless to 
the elements or to wild beasts, when their presence became 
a burden, with the present practice of erecting orphans' 
homes, homes for the aged, and asylums for the helpless. 
In his relations with his fellowmen and with women and 
children, man has made an enormous ethical advance. 

Man has made similar progress religiously. The 
earliest deities of man were evil, not good, and had to be 
placated with offerings and sacrifices. The attitude of 
primitive man towards the gods was chiefly that of fear. 
Religion was primarily a question of buying off the gods' 
vengeance and displeasure by gifts and sacrifices, or the 
purchasing of the gods' favor and blessing by a similar 



30 Something More 

process. The belief that the gods delighted especially in 
the gift of human blood was responsible for the widespread 
custom of offering up captured enemies, and sometimes 
even friends and relatives, upon the altar. A vast chasm 
separates this conception from the present belief in God 
as an ethical person, holy and righteous beyond comparison, 
who has boundless affection for his children, who seeks 
in every possible way to help them, and who longs to enter 
into a deeper companionship with them. 

Whether we consider man physically, mentally, 
socially, ethically, or religiously, he has made progress. 
And yet he has at no point reached the limit beyond 
which further progress is impossible. There are vast con- 
quests still to be made in the physical and material realm. 
Man's present knowledge is only an infinitesimal fraction 
of all there is to be known. After pointing out that exact 
physical science began with Galileo, some three hundred 
years ago. Professor William James goes on to say: *'Is 
it credible that such a mushroom knowledge, such a growth 
over night as this, can represent more than the minutest 
glimpse of what the universe will prove to be when ad- 
equately understood? No! our science is a drop, our 
ignorance a sea.'* 

Vast as has been man's progress socially, only a bare 
beginning has been made. Gigantic social problems are 
yet to be solved. The earth is filled with monstrous wrongs 
which must be overthrown. Only the first principles of 
social and ethical relations have been learned and applied. 
Vast multitudes of men are ignorant of their kinship to 
God, are unconscious of his presence, and are indifferent 
or antagonistic to his claims upon their lives. 



Something More in Man 31 

There is something more in man. That which is true 
of the race is true of the individual. Vast stores of hidden 
power are lying dormant in every man. No man functions 
up to the maximum of his physical efficiency, or is using 
to the limit all of the latent mental energy with which he 
is gifted, or has realized to the full extent his capacity 
for brotherhood, or has availed himself of the full privileges 
of sonship and communion with God. ^^As a rule,'' says 
Professor William James, *'men habitually use only a 
small part of the power which they actually possess and 
which they might use under appropriate conditions. 
Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half 
awake. We are making use of only a small part of our 
possible mental and physical resources.'* There is some- 
thing more in man. 

You cannot always tell what a man is by looking at 
him. What he appears to be and what he really is may be 
radically different. The appearance of a man today does 
not always reveal what he will be tomorrow. 

On October 27, 1858, in the city of New York, was 
born a baby boy, who grew into a *' thin-shanked, pale, and 
delicate child." This boy was very timid and on account 
of ill health was not allowed to attend the public school. 
Two score and ten years later, by careful training and 
force of will, this child had become a sportsman of first 
rank, a boxer, a wrestler, a big game hunter, a ranchman, 
a soldier, an aggressive political leader, Governor of 
New York, President of the United States, a leading 
international statesman, an apostle of the strenuous 
life. 

Another well known man of today was a sickly child 



32 Something More 

with an abnormally large head. He was such a poor 
student that his teacher once told an inspector that he 
was "addled.'* He was always at the foot of his class, 
and his father once remarked that "he was rather wanting 
in ordinary acumen.'* On one occasion he set fire to a 
barn, for which offense he was publicly flogged in the 
village square. Later he became a newsboy on a train, 
and as a result of a boyish escapade became partially 
deaf. 

Judged by outward appearance, he would not have 
been rated very high. And yet this sickly, large-headed, 
partially deaf newsboy grows to be one of the most bril- 
liant and useful men of all time. He has taken out more 
than 1,400 patents, and included among his inventions 
and discoveries are the incandescent electric light, the 
phonograph, the motion picture, the kinetoscope, the 
carbon telephone transmitter, the quadruplex system of 
telegraphy. Industries which are an outgrowth of this 
man's inventions employ 680,530 men and have a total 
capital invested of $6,727,000,000. 

What Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas A. Edison 
have accomplished affords added proof that it is unwise 
to judge by appearance, and that what a man is is not 
always a true criterion of what he may become. 

The most significant change in a man is not the change 
in his bodily strength or mental capacity. The most 
marvelous and far-reaching change which man ever under- 
goes is the change in his moral character and spiritual 
nature. It is in this realm of moral character that the 
power of Jesus Christ operates. An innumerable throng 
of men and women have had their characters changed 



Something More in Man 33 

utterly because of contact with him, their desires and 
motives transformed, their thoughts and deeds revolution- 
ized. Sometimes this contact has been through the 
historical record of Jesus' life, sometimes through the 
spoken word of a Christian witness, sometimes through 
observation of the Christlike life of a friend, sometimes 
through the inner witness of God's Spirit to their own 
hearts. The particular method by which Jesus trans- 
forms a human character is not so significant as the fact 
itself: He does purify and uplift those who fulfill certain 
simple conditions. 

It is the testimony of countless witnesses that genuine 
eagerness to be free from impurity and wrongdoing, 
simple belief in Jesus Christ, acceptance of his offer of 
forgiveness and power, and an earnest effort to follow him, 
open the floodgates and allow his power to pour in upon 
us with transforming and uplifting effects. 

In the opening chapter of the Fourth Gospel is found 
the first recorded personal promise of changed moral 
character made by Jesus Christ. Andrew had brought 
his brother to see the Messiah. Jesus, looking upon 
Simon with a penetrating and discerning glance, and seeing 
within him vast undeveloped moral and spiritual re- 
sources, said to him: "Thou art — thou shalt be." 

Thou art — ^what? If Jesus had filled it all in, he 
might have said: Thou art Simon, a crude, unlettered 
fisherman, thou art impulsive and undisciplined, thou 
art passionate and lacking in self-control, thou art am- 
bitious and self-centered, thou art weak and unreliable, 
thou art fickle and cowardly, thou art an untrue friend 
and a disloyal disciple. 



34 Something More 

And if Jesus had filled in the other side he might have 
said: Thou shall be Peter, a rock-like character; thou 
shalt be the mighty preacher, filled with the Holy Spirit, 
fearlessly proclaiming the Word of Life, persuasively 
winning thousands to loyal devotion to thy crucified 
Lord; thou shalt be a sower of seed and a planter of 
spiritual life in countless communities; thou shalt be a 
writer of words of wisdom and inspiration which shall 
endure through all time; thou shalt be a tower of strength 
to thy brethren in many lands; thou shalt be a martyr, 
laying down thy life for my sake and the Gospel's; thou 
shalt be a true witness, a rock indeed. 

To change the actual — "thou art'* — into the ideal — 
*'thou shalt be" — is the high function of Jesus Christ, 
and all of this he did for Simon Peter. 

In that very short book in the Bible, that letter 
of only twenty-five verses, written by the Apostle Paul to 
his friend Philemon, is recorded the story of a man's 
marvelous transformation. Onesimus was the name of 
one of Philemon's slaves. Onesimus ran away from his 
master and fled to the city of Rome. Here in some un- 
known way he came to know Paul. Through Paul's in- 
fluence he became a changed man, a Christian. Paul 
sent him back to Philemon, with these words, according 
to Moff*att's translation: 

"It is Onesimus! Once you found him a worthless 
character, but now-a-days he is worth something to you 
and me. I am sending him back to you, and parting with 
my very heart .... no longer a mere slave but some" 
thing more than a slave — a beloved brother; especially 
dear to me, but how much more to you as a man and as a 
Christian!" 



Something More in Man 35 

Onesimusjthe runaway slave, transformed into a man, 
a brother beloved, a Christian, forms one link in the 
chain stretching across the centuries of lives changed by 
the power of Jesus Christ. 

In the early days of the nineteenth century, a son 
was born in the home of an Irish counterfeiter. This child 
never went to school and never received any moral or 
religious training. At the age of thirteen he was sent 
to America, and soon became a river-thief, an outlaw, 
a terror and nuisance in the Fourth Ward. At the age of 
nineteen he was sentenced to fifteen years in Sing Sing. 
After serving from four to five years he was greatly im- 
pressed upon hearing a talk by "Awful'* Gardner, a 
reformed criminal, and resolved to change his mode of 
living. After an imprisonment of seven years and six 
months he was pardoned and set at liberty. Soon after- 
ward he became a confirmed drunkard, a gambler, a thief, 
a worse criminal than before. Finally, through the in- 
fluence of a man who was distributing religious tracts, 
he was induced to attend a service in a rescue mission. 
Here he became converted, a changed man, a Christian. 
Twice he fell into drunkenness, twice he arose. Shortly 
afterward he founded the now famous Water Street 
Mission, and ten years later he founded the Cremorne 
Mission. During the decade from 1872 to 1882 he was 
by far the most successful Christian worker with drunk- 
ards, harlots, and the criminal classes, in the whole country. 
Hundreds of men and women were lifted from the gutter 
and brought into a new life of respectability and power 
because of the kindly and earnest efforts of this man. 
From a drunken criminal, Jerry McAuley was transformed 



36 Something More 

into one of the most beloved and useful citizens New York 
City has ever had. 

Regarding his own early life John Bunyan says: "I 
had but few equals for cursing and swearing, lying and 
blasphemy of the Holy Name of God. I was the very 
ringleader of all the youths that kept me company in all 
manner of vice and ungodliness." This is the man who 
was changed by the power of Jesus Christ into the saintly 
writer whose books h^ve been spiritual food for countless 
thousands in many lands for hundreds of years. 

From a youth given to swearing, lying, and filthy 
conversation, William Carey was transformed into the 
saintly missionary who poured out his life for India. 

The young Prussian, George Muller, was changed from 
a gambling, dishonest, untruthful, licentious student into 
the devout Christian founder of orphans' homes, con- 
cerning whose work it was said: **If we count up the 
money which he received for the orphan houses which he 
founded, for his day schools and Sunday schools, for the 
maintenance of Christian missions in other lands, and 
for Bible and tract distribution, we find that the total 
of these contributions amounted to over $6,900,000. Yet 
he never besought help from men, his sole dependence was 
in prayer. '' 

One of the great evangelists of the last century never 
heard a word of prayer in his father's house until the 
age of twenty-nine, and never owned a Bible until he 
bought one to hunt up passages referred to in his law 
books. From a careless, indifferent lawyer, Charles G. 
Finney was transformed into the flaming evangelist who 
changed the manner of life in whole cities and communities. 



Something More in Man 37 

Dwight L. Moody was changed from a shoe salesman 
into the evangelist whose influence has reached around the 
world. In all parts of the earth are men and women whose 
characters were transformed as a direct result of contact 
with the changed Moody. One of the men the course of 
whose life was changed by Moody is Dr. W. T. Grenfell. 
From a self-centered physician of London, he has been 
transformed into the unselfish and devoted doctor who 
for Christ's sake practices medicine in Labrador. For 
twenty-six years this heroic physician has ministered to 
the bodily and spiritual needs of the fishermen and trappers 
in a parish of a thousand miles in the frozen north. 

These are the names of only a few of the vast multi- 
tude of men and women whose moral characters and 
spiritual natures have been transformed by the teaching, 
personal example, and living presence of Jesus Christ. 

None of us have realized more than a fractional part 
of the power latent within us. None of us have any ade- 
quate conception of that which we are capable of becoming. 
We live our days in comparative weakness, while within 
us are vast stores of dormant power. The undeveloped 
resources of every life are such as to fill us with awe and 
amazement. It Is the function of Jesus Christ to reveal 
these latent energies, to call them into expression, and 
to link them up with the infinite power of God. 

How much power is lying dormant in your life? No 
man can tell. Only One knows what is in you. He alone 
knows all that you are capable of becoming, and he alone 
has power to quicken to the limit your latent moral ca- 
pacities. 

Are you weak and defeated ? Are you a victim of your 



38 Something More 

own baser desires? Are you failing to develop the mar- 
velous latent resources in your own life? Are you a mere 
slave? Or are you something more, a free son, a brother 
beloved, a Christian ? 

Thou art — ^what? Let the still small voice of God 
help you to fill it in. Must the answer be, thou art — 
impure, intemperate, dishonest, untruthful, irreverent, 
blasphemous, selfish, covetous, careless, unkind, luke- 
warm, lazy, ungrateful, unforgiving, filled with hypo- 
crisy, defeated, a slave? Thou art — . Be honest. Fill 
it in. 

Thou shalt be — ^what? You cannot fill It in. You 
cannot tear asunder the cloud that separates you from 
tomorrow. You do not know what is in store for you. 
Thou shalt be — let him fill it in for you. Thou shalt be — 
pure, honest, true, reverent, unselfish, loving, loyal, 
victorious, filled with divine discontent with mere material 
and physical pleasures, eager to be of service to thy fellows, 
willing to deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow me. 

Thou art — ^yes. Thou shalt be — but not automatic- 
ally or inevitably, not by thy own power, alone and unaid- 
ed, not without fulfilling the conditions of a victorious life. 
You shall be — but only as you turn to Jesus Christ, as 
you live in close fellowship with him, as you let his strength 
supplement your weakness, as you let him transform your 
character and make you free indeed. Whether you are to 
receive his power depends upon your own decision. He 
cannot help you until you are ready to receive his assist- 
ance. 

Surrender your will, your desires, your ambitions, 
your very life, to him, and then a marvelous transformation 



Something More in Man 39 

will be wrought in your life, you will become a new creature, 
dormant capacities will spring into expression, hidden 
power will be brought to light, latent energies will become 
available power. You will then be numbered among that 
vast multitude who have come under the transforming 
touch of Jesus Christ. 

Seek him in the historic record of his life, seek him in 
the lives of his truest followers, seek him in quiet hours 
of prayer and communion, seek him in the humble task 
of serving your fellows. "Seek and ye shall find.'' And 
when you find him you will discover that he is the key 
to vaults of hidden treasures in your own life. 



SOMETHING MORE IN JESUS CHRIST 



"You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right: that is 
what I am." — John 13:13 (MofFat). 

*'No man ever spoke as he does." — John 7:46 (Moffatt). 

''For ours is no high priest who is incapable of sympathizing 
with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every 
respect like ourselves, yet without sinning. " — Hebrews 4:1 j 
(Moffatt). 

*'I am the way, and the truth, and the Hfe." — John 14:6. 

"I am the Hght of the world: he that followeth me shall not 
walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life. " — John 8:12, 

*'I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, 
though he die, yet shall he live. " — John 11:25, 

**A11 power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." — Mat- 
thew 28:18. 

**We proclaim a Christ who has been crucified — to Jews a 
stumbling-block, to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who have 
received the Call, whether Jews or Greeks, Christ the power of 
God and the wisdom of God. "— / Corinthians 1:23, 24 (Wey- 
mouth). 

"Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him 
the name which is above every name: that in the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow." — Philippians 2.*p, 10, 

"This is my beloved Son: hear ye him." — Mark p;/. 



CHAPTER III 
SOMETHING MORE IN JESUS CHRIST 

The Fourth Gospel closes with these striking words: 
"But there are also many other things which Jesus did — 
so vast a number indeed that if they were all described in 
detail, I suppose that the world itself could not contain 
the books that would have to be written/' (Weymouth.) 
In this figurative way the biographer expresses his deep 
conviction as to the something more in Jesus Christ. 

This conviction has been shared by thinking men 
through succeeding centuries. No generation is willing to 
admit that all possibilities of further knowledge of Jesus 
have been exhausted. Each generation seeks to discover 
for itself more about him. Jesus has been and is the most 
discussed character of history. Countless thousands of 
volumes have been written about him and to this day 
the record of his life is the "best seller '^ among books. 

The present generation believes that it knows more 
about Jesus Christ than any preceding generation knew. 
Yet we are equally confident that our grandchildren's 
children will understand Jesus far better than we do. 
There is something more in him than we have been able 
to fathom. 

Consider his matchless teaching. After nineteen 
centuries, his teaching regarding the great fundamentals 
of life has not been sounded to its depths. No man has 
yet appreciated all that is involved in Jesus' teaching 
regarding God. Of all the founders of great religions, 
Jesus alone proclaimed one God, immanent and powerful, 

43 



44 Something More 

holy and righteous, a loving and seeking Father, con- 
cerned about the welfare of each of his children. 

It is true that Mohammed taught his followers to 
believe in one God, but the God of Mohammed was not a 
moral or righteous God. Robert E. Speer well says: *^I 
would rather believe in ten pure gods than in one God who 
would have for his supreme prophet and representative a 
man with Mohammed's moral character/' "The Koran 
contains ninety-nine names of God. They fail to include, 
and this is the defect of the whole Moslem doctrine of God, 
the fatherhood of God, the attribute of love, and the 
principle of ethical justice.'' 

Hinduism has 333,000,000 gods. Many of these gods 
are shockingly immoral. "The principal deities, as 
Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Indra, Krishna, are represented 
in the sacred books as guilty of theft, lying, intoxication, 
adultery, murder." It was necessary for the British 
Government by statute to prohibit the obscenities of 
public worship in India. "But the British Government 
has not cleansed all the holy places. I suppose that of all 
the obscene carvings in the world there are none more 
loathsome than the friezes around the temples of the Rajah 
of Nepal, in the holiest city of Hinduism, on the banks of 
its most sacred river." 

As to Buddhism, "the fact cannot be disputed away,'* 
says Max Miiller, "that the religion of Buddha was from 
the beginning purely atheistic. Buddha denies the ex- 
istence, not only of the Creator, but of any absolute 
being. As regards the idea of a personal Creator, Buddha 
seems merciless." With regard to Confucianism, Dn 
Legge says that he knows of only one case in which 



Something More in Jesus Christ 45 

Confucius used the personal name of God, except when 
quoting from the older books. **In Confucianism/* says 
Arnold Foster, ''there is no doctrine of a divine love, 
nor any thought of a God who is love.'' Confucius 
evaded all religious inquiry and discouraged prayer. 

"The conception of God," says William Newton 
Clarke, "with which Christianity addresses the world, is 
the best that man can form or entertain. There are many 
glories in the religion of Jesus Christ, and it can do many 
services for men; but its crowning glory, or rather the 
sum of all its glory, is its God. Christianity has such a 
conception of God as no other religion has attained; and 
what is more, it proclaims and brings to pass such an 
experience of God as humanity has never elsewhere known. 
It is in this that we find that superiority which entitles 
Christianity to offer itself to all mankind.'' 

There is something more in the teaching of Jesus 
with regard to God's holiness and righteousness, his 
outreaching love for his children, his eagerness to reclaim 
the wrongdoer, his readiness to answer prayer, his desire 
to give abundant life, his requirement of wholehearted 
loyalty, than any of us have discovered. 

The teaching of Jesus regarding man is not yet fully 
understood. Jesus sets a new and higher value upon 
human beings. A man is more valuable than all the riches 
of earth. Each person is a child in whom God is personally 
interested, an heir to the Father's wealth. It is not God's 
will that one of these should perish. God leaves the 
ninety and nine who are safe and seeks the one who is lost. 
Jesus teaches the kinship and equality of all children of God. 
No division of race or color, class or caste, rich or poor, 
male or female, is found in the teaching of Jesus. The 



46 Something More 

God of Jesus is no respecter of persons. He shows no 
favoritism or partiality. 

In none of the non-Christian religions is this intrinsic 
worth and equality of all human beings taught. "Bud- 
dhism not only does not admit the existence of a God, it 
also denies the existence of a soul, a permanent, unchang- 
ing entity.'' "The Hindu Scriptures represent man as a 
mere illusion, the plaything of the Absolute One. For 
him to claim real existence is the madness of Avidya, 
ignorance.'' "The system of caste which is one of the 
most characteristic institutions of Hinduism and the basis 
of Hindu society," says the Bishop of Madras, "is a 
direct denial of the brotherhood of man. The idea that 
the Brahman is the brother of the pariah is contrary to 
the first principles of Hinduism, and abhorrent to the 
Hindu mind." 

All of the great non-Christian religions unite in re- 
fusing to regard woman as man's equal. "In Buddha's 
original plan woman had no place in his order, and so 
was ineligible to salvation. Indeed in Buddhism her 
only hope of reaching Nirvana is through rebirth as a 
man." In the Koran a man is allowed four wives and 
as many concubines as his right hand possesses. On 
this point S. L. Poole says: 

"It is not so much in the matter of wives as in that of 
concubines that Mohammed made an irretrievable mis- 
take. The condition of the female slave in the East is 
indeed deplorable. She is at the entire mercy of her master, 
who can do what he pleases with her and her companions; 
for the Moslem is not restricted in the number of his 
concubines, as he is in that of his wives. The female white 
slave is kept solely for the master's sensual gratification, 



Something More in Jesus Christ 47 

and is sold when he is tired of her, and so she passes from 
master to master, a very wreck of womanhood/' 

"The teaching of the Chinese classics is that women 
are as different in nature from man as earth is from heaven, 
and that they are separate not only in bodily form, but in 
the very essence of nature; that though women are re- 
garded as human beings, they are of a lower state than 
men and can never attain to full equality with men; that 
women are to be kept under the power of men and not 
allowed any will of their own; that women cannot have 
any happiness of their own — they have to live and work 
for men; and that only as the mother of a son, and es- 
pecially of the continuator of the direct line of a family, 
can a woman escape from her degradation and become to a 
degree equal to her husband.'* 

In India the position of women is shown to be inferior 
to that of men from the hour of their birth. When a son 
is born, friends come to congratulate the father, but when 
he has a little girl, if friends come at all, it is to show their 
sympathy with the family. The Hindu religion permits 
a man to marry a second wife, if within seven years of 
marriage he has no son, although he may have daughters. 
There is not in any non-Christian religion a parallel of 
the Christian home. 

Jesus alone gives an adequate conception of sin. 
He alone offers forgiveness of sin and salvation from sin. 
Dr. Speer has summarized the attitude of non-Christian 
religions in these words: 

"Moharnmed's doctrine of God's sovereignty fixes 
the responsibility for sin on God and dissolves the sense 
of guilt, and it denies the evil taint of sin in human nature. 
In Hinduism sin as opposition to the will of a personal 
God is inconceivable; it is the inevitable result of the acts 



48 Something More 

of a previous state of being; it is evil, because all existence 
and all action, good as well as bad, are evil, and it is il- 
lusion, as all things are illusion. In pure Buddhism there 
can be no sin in our sense of the word, because there is no 
God; sin there means 'thirst,* * desire,* and what Buddhism 
seeks to escape is not the evil of life only, but life itself. 
Confucianism makes no mention of man's relation to God, 
and totally lacks all conception of sin. In one word, 
Christianity is the only religion in the world which clearly 
diagnoses the disease of humanity and discovers what it is 
that needs to be healed and that attempts permanently 
and radically to deal with it. And so, also, Christianity 
alone knows what the salvation is which men require, 
and makes provision for it." 

** There is no great truth in the non-Christian religions 
which is not found in a purer and richer form in the Chris- 
tian religion,** says Dr. Speer. "Hinduism teaches that 
God is near, but it forgets that He is holy. Moham- 
medanism teaches that God is great, but it forgets that 
He is loving. Buddhism teaches that this earthly life 
of ours is fleeting, but it forgets that we must therefore 
work the works of God before the night comes. Confucian- 
ism teaches that we live in the midst of a great framework 
of holy relationships, but it forgets that in the midst of all 
these we have a living help and a personal fellowship with 
the eternal God, in whose lasting presence is our home.** 

There is vastly more in the teaching of Jesus than we 
have discovered. No other teacher is comparable with 
Him. 

Consider the personal example of Jesus. He alone 
of all mankind embodies in his own attitudes and deeds all 
that he teaches. No other religion has as its founder a 
perfect and sinless character. "Mohammed's character 
was admitted by himself to be a weak and erring one. 
It was disfigured by at least one huge moral blemish; 



Something More in Jesus Christ 49 

and exactly in so far as his life has, in spite of his earnest 
and reiterated protestations, been made an example to 
be followed, has that vice been perpetuated/^ Confucius 
made no claim to perfection of character. Indeed, he 
says: *'In letters, I am perhaps equal to other men, but 
the character of the superior man, carrying out in his 
conduct what he professes, is what I have not yet attained 
to/' Buddha never dreamed of setting himself up as a 
moral ideal for men. "As for the Hindu gods, we are 
better gods ourselves than they are — that is, our moral 
characters are superior to those of the Hindu gods.'* 

Jesus alone practices what he teaches. He teaches 
faith in God, his own life is a constant exhibition of that 
trust; he teaches the value of prayer, his own power comes 
as a result of faithfulness in this practice; he teaches no 
compromise with sin, by his own example he denounces 
all forms of wrongdoing; he teaches the equality and worth 
of man, he associates with and seeks to win the rich and 
the poor, the respectable and the outcast; he teaches 
love and compassion for one's fellows, his life is given in 
unselfish service to others; he teaches forgiveness of 
others, on the cross he cries, "Father, forgive them." 
Here is the one consistent teacher, the one perfectly 
balanced man, the one sinless character of all humanity. 
The combined search of nineteen centuries has failed to 
reveal all that is wrapped up in the personal example of 
Jesus Christ. 

The death of Jesus is only faintly understood. The 
preaching of the cross has seemed foolishness to those who 
do not believe; it has been the power of a new life to those 
who do believe. There have been many theories of the 



50 Something More 

cross, but these differing theories have all been based upon 
the one fact of the cross. 

"The Christian missionary of today," says W. L. 
Walker, *^as truly as the first ambassadors of the Cross, 
finds that the simple preaching of the Gospel is the power 
of God unto men's salvation. He does not go preaching 
a theology, or trying to prove that Jesus Christ said certain 
things about His death; he simply tells the story of God's 
Love meeting man's need, and he finds that it is still 
divinely attested. Many thousands have believed and 
been saved who could not possibly understand any elab- 
orate theory or proof of the Atonement. The message de- 
livered has appealed to a sense of need within themselves, 
and has met that need. The experience of the first Apostles 
in this respect is being repeated all over the world today/* 

There is more in the resurrection and living presence 
of Jesus Christ in the hearts of men than we have fathomed. 
Our failure in this regard is one of the great tragedies of 
life. Blessed companionship and boundless spiritual 
power are awaiting those who are willing to venture by 
faith into this region. When we understand more fully 
the meaning of Jesus* words, "I am with you always, 
even unto the end of the world,** we shall be able to enter 
more deeply into the meaning of life. 

Jesus alone can give adequate power to overcome 
temptation, to develop the strongest moral character, 
to render the maximum service to God and man, to 
attain that "something more** which we considered in 
Chapter II. No other religion has in it the dynamic power 
of Christianity. The way in which Jesus Christ has com- 
pletely changed the moral characters of vast multitudes 
of men and women is the great marvel of all time. A 



Something More in Jesus Christ 51 

grafting Zaccheus receives power to become a generous 
philanthropist, a vacillating Simon becomes a very rock 
of strength, a Son of Thunder becomes the apostle of love, 
a sinful harlot becomes a woman of purity, the libertine 
Augustine becomes the great saint, the drunken criminal 
becomes the beloved Jerry McAuley, the dissolute baseball 
player becomes the famous evangelist. 

Jesus Christ gives power to serve others. He takes a 
boy from a cotton factory in Scotland, touches his heart 
with the need of Africa, trains his hand and mind, sends 
him where white men have never been to battle almost 
single handed with the forces of barbarism and super- 
stition. For more than thirty years this man lives and 
labors among these needy black folks, teaching them of 
his Lord by word and deed, until the beliefs and practices 
of thousands have been changed. This one man opened 
up the way and laid the foundations for the work of suc- 
ceeding missionaries of the Cross, and made possible the 
changing of the moral tone of a whole continent. 

Jesus takes a motherless gypsy boy from the rude tent 
of his father, uses him as a mouthpiece and an instrument, 
and through him transforms the lives of tens of thousands 
of men and women on four continents. 

Jesus takes a rough miner of the Klondike, changes 
his attitude and disposition, fills him with an intense 
desire for social righteousness, sends him into a great city 
to battle for the oppressed, and uses him marvelously 
in making human brotherhood a reality. 

What David Livingstone, Gypsy Smith, and Raymond 
Robins have been able to do affords added evidence of the 
power Jesus gives to those who seek to follow him. These 



52 Something More 

are only three of innumerable instances that might be 
cited of mighty power to change moral character given 
to men and women. 

Jesus Christ has power to change the idolatry of savage 
heathen into reverent worship of the loving Father, and 
to transform their barbarism into active Christian living. 
When the first witnesses for Christ arrived in the Fiji 
Islands in 1835, they found the people in an indescribable 
condition. Cannibalism was rampant. One chief, Ra 
Undreundre, registered the dead bodies he had eaten by 
a row of stones. An actual count revealed that since he 
had become a middle-aged man he alone had consumed 
the bodies of 872 men, women, and children. One chief 
killed and ate his own wife. Enemies were roasted in 
ovens. The bodies of murdered men were used as rollers 
for the launching of a new canoe. The blood of men was 
used to wash the decks of a new canoe. Wives were 
strangled when their husbands died. Human skulls were 
used as soup dishes. The sick were buried alive. Un- 
truthfulness, treachery, witchcraft, and countless super- 
stitions were common to all the people. "The heathenism 
of Fiji had reached the most appalling depth of abomin- 
ation." "The savages of Fiji broke beyond the common 
limits of rapine and bloodshed in violating the elementary 
instincts of humanity, and stood unrivalled as a disgrace 
to mankind." 

The result of the labors of a mere handful of Christian 
missionaries among these people is modestly described 
in these words: 

"The change which has taken place in Fiji during the 
last five-and-twenty years — a change going far beneath 



Something More in Jesus Christ S3 

the broad surface over which it has extended — presents 
to the philosophical student of history a phenomenon 
which cannot be explained except by recognizing the 
presence of a supernatural force, Almighty and Divine. 
Let the nature of this change be well considered. Through- 
out a great part of Fiji, cannibalism has become entirely 
extinct. Polygamy, in important districts, is fast passing 
away, and infanticide in the same proportion is diminish- 
ing. Arbitrary and despotic violence on the part of rulers 
is yielding to the control of justice and equity. Human 
life is no longer reckoned cheap, and the avenger of blood 
comes not now as a stealthy assassin, or backed by savage 
warriors, but invested with the solemn dignity of estab- 
lished law, founded on the word of God." 

In 1907 a distinguished traveler wrote: **In the earlier 
part of the nineteenth century, the Fijian was the most 
determined cannibal known to savage history. In the 
fifties and sixties, and even later, murder, torture, and 
cannibalism were the chief diversions of a Fijian^s life. 
In 1835 the first missionaries arrived and from that time 
onward the islands began to make progress toward civiliza- 
tion. The cannibal and heathen days of Fiji passed away 
more than thirty years ago. The Fijians themselves, 
though less than two generations removed from the wild 
and wicked days of the Thakombau reign, are an extremely 
peaceable and good-natured set of people. This change, 
eflPected largely by the missionaries, is most notable." 

It was on a stormy evening in December, 1852, that 
the quarterly missionary meeting was held in the village of 
Beverley, Yorkshire. Thirty people were present, in- 
cluding only one young man. So impressed was this 
young man that he volunteered to go as a foreign mis- 
sionary. Refusing a business opportunity offering $5,000 
a year, he boarded a war vessel, and after a voyage of six 
months landed at Victoria, British Columbia. Here it 



54 Something More 

was necessary for him to secure permission from the 
Governor of the Hudson Bay Company before he could 
proceed to his destination, Fort Simpson, 600 miles north, 
just south of the boundary of Russian Alaska. The 
Governor, Sir James Douglas, refused this permission, 
saying: ** Knowing the situation as I do, I feel sure you 
will not last up there three months. It is all your life is 
worth to go among these savage and bloodthirsty Indians. 
You will do no good.'^ After much persuasion, he finally 
consented, with the remark: **Well, young man, if you 
are to be killed and eaten, I suppose you are the one most 
vitally interested after all." 

On the way north, this young missionary was greeted 
by the sight of dismembered and disembowelled human 
bodies strewn on the beach at Fort Rupert. It was among 
these Indians that William Duncan labored, these men 
who were given over to superstition and deviltry, gam- 
bling and drunkenness, who brought their wives and 
daughters to the white settlements as prostitutes. 

Twenty years later. Admiral Prevost of the British 
Navy described a Sunday spent in this Indian community: 

"The church bell rings and the whole population pour 
out from their houses — men, women, and children — to 
worship God in His own house, built with their own hands. 
First there was a very old woman, staff in hand; after her 
came one who had been a notorious gambler; next followed 
a dissipated youth, now reclaimed; and after him a chief, 
who had dared a few years ago to lift proudly his hand 
to stop the work of God, but who now with humble mien is 
wending his way to worship. Then came a once still more 
haughty man of rank, after him a mother carrying an infant 
child, then a young woman who had been snatched from 



Something More in Jesus Christ 55 

the jaws of infamy, and the last I reflected upon was a 
murderer, when a heathen, having murdered his own wife 
and burned her to ashes." 

Forty years after the arrival of William Duncan, a 
competent witness wrote: 

"Such influence had the combination of the gospel 
message with the policy of Mr. Duncan that while there 
were eleven murders committed among the tribe at Fort 
Simpson the first year he was there, now for forty years 
there has not been a case of bloodshed, or even an attack 
with a weapon among the Indians who have come with 
him. Once, when he was away, some of them quarreled, 
and two of them used their fists upon each other. That 
is the nearest approach to an act of violence committed 
among them in forty years!" 

This community has now reached a high stage of 
Christian civilization. In the village of 800 or 900 people 
there are 130 families who own comfortable homes, there 
are two pianos and forty-six organs in private homes, 
there is a community store with stock valued at $20,000, 
a sawmill and cannery, the combined receipts of which for 
the decade were nearly $1,000,000, a newspaper, a 
library with more than 2,000 volumes, a brass band of 
thirty pieces, and a beautiful church, with a pipe organ 
and a choir of forty voices, which rendered with great 
beauty Handel's "Messiah." 

On January 13, 1915, the body of the daughter of a 
drunken Scotch shoemaker was placed in a simple coflSn at 
Itu, in far-away Nigeria, on the west coast of Africa. For 
thirty-nine years Mary Slessor of Calabar had lived and 
labored among these savage people, considered to be the 
most degraded of any in Africa. "Bloody, savage, crafty. 



56 Something More 

cruel, treacherous, sensual, devilish, thievish, cannibals, 
fetich-worshippers, murderers, were a few of the epithets 
applied to them by men accustomed to observe closely 
and to weigh their words/' 

For months at a time Mary Slessor lived alone among 
these warring peoples. Again and again she was faced 
with death. From the many such instances recorded 
by her biographer we choose a single concrete example: 

"A hundred yards from the village of the enemy she 
came upon the band in the bush making preparations for 
attack: the war-fever was at its height, and the air re- 
sounded with wild yells . . . Passing on to the village, 
she encountered a solid wall of armed men . . . The 
silence was ominous . . . Then a strange thing happened. 

From out of the sullen line of dark-skinned warriors 
there stepped an old man, who came and knelt at her feet. 
^Ma, we thank you for coming. We admit the wound- 
ing of the chief .... We beg of you to use your influence 
with the injured party in the interest of peace.' . . . The 
next few hours witnessed scenes of wild excitement, rising 
sometimes to frenzy. Bands of men kept advancing from 
both sides and joining in the palaver, and every arrival 
increased the indignation and the resolution to abide by 
the old, manlier way of war. She was well-nigh worn out, 
but . . . [finally] it was agreed that a fine should settle 
the quarrel. Even then the men declared that they 
were ashamed to return 'like women,' without having 
fought. They begged her to allow them to have a ^small 
scrap' in order to prove that they were not cowards. Not 
till they were past the danger zone did she leave them." 

Never in all her dealings with the tribes was she molest- 
ed in any way. Once only, in a compound brawl in which 
she intervened, was she struck, but the native who wielded 
the stick had touched her accidentally. The cry im- 



Something More in Jesus Christ 57 

mediately went up that she was hurt, and both sides fell 
on the wretched man, and would have killed him had she 
not gone to the rescue. 

After some years of labor among these people, this 
modest little woman in her annual report used these words: 

"Raiding, plundering, the stealing of slaves, have 
almost entirely ceased . . . For fully a year we have 
heard of nothing like violence from even the most back- 
ward of our people^ ... It seemed sometimes to be 
almost miraculous that hordes of armed, drunken, passion- 
swayed men should give heed and chivalrous homage to a 
woman, and one who had neither wealth nor outward 
display of any kind to produce the slightest sentiment in 
her favour. But such was the case, and we do not recollect 
one instance of insubordination. 

"No tribe was formerly so feared because of their utter 
disregard for human life, but human life is now safe.*' 

" Her fame h ad gone still farther,** writes her biographer, 
"and people were now coming from places a hundred miles 
distant to see the wonderful person who was ruling the 
land and doing away with all the evil fashions. And what 
did they see.? A powerful Sultana sitting in a palace with 
an army at her command? No, only a weak woman in a 
lowly house, surrounded by a number of helpless children. 
But they, too, came under her mysterious spell.*' 

It was love for Christ that made her what she was, 
and there is no limit in that direction. 

It is utterly impossible to measure the influence of 
Jesus upon the moral and spiritual progress of the world. 
The greater value put on human life, the more highly 
honored place of womanhood, the nobler attitude toward 
childhood, the abolition of many giant evils, are founded 
upon the spirit and teaching of Jesus. Our new world- 
ideal of democracy and human brotherhood is a direct 



58 Something More 

outgrowth of his example and teaching. Much has been 
accomplished. Much more is still to be done. In each 
one of us there is '^much unevangelized territory.** Jesus 
Christ is personally unknown to vast masses of men on 
all continents. His influence is limited by the failure and 
indifference of his professed followers. For the individual 
and for mankind there is something more In Jesus Christ. 

So has the power of Jesus Christ affected the world 
that the great French writer Renan, himself anything but 
a professed follower of Jesus, felt constrained to confess: 
*'Thou, O, Christ, shalt become the cornerstone of human- 
ity so completely that to tear thy name from the world 
would be to rend it to its foundations.** 

The influence of Jesus in the moral and spiritual 
spheres of life has been so incomparably greater than that 
of any other man that the centuries have been at a loss 
to explain his power. Is Jesus a mere man, or Is he some- 
thing more than a man? 

The philosopher and publicist Lamennals expressed 
his own answer in these words: 

"When I consider his life, the marvelous mingling In 
him of grandeur and simplicity, of sweetness and force, 
that incomprehensible perfection which never for^ a 
moment fails, neither In the Intimate familiarity of In- 
structions addressed by him to the people at large, neither 
in the joyfulness of the festival at Cana, nor^ amid the 
anguish of Gethsemane, neither in the glory of His triumph 
nor in the ignominy of his punishment; when I contem- 
plate this grand marvel which the world has seen only 
once and which has renewed the world, I do not ask myself 
if Christ was divine — I should rather be tempted to ask 
myself if he were human. '* 



Something More in Jesus Christ 59 

Professor A. E. Garvie expresses his thought in these 
words: "Aside from the divinity of Christ it seems to me 
impossible to account, without violation of all historical 
probability, for the records of his teaching, work, character 
and influence which have come down to us; for the growth, 
the spread, and the worth of the society which he founded; 
for the moral and spiritual forces which proceed from him 
to transform the life of individuals, nations, and races." 

Dean Charles R. Brown of Yale says: "To recognize 
in Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God, the Saviour of man- 
kind, is to receive a pledge of the absolute and unutterable 
help of God in bearing all burdens, in meeting all tempta- 
tions, in solving all human problems. When men once 
open their minds freely and sympathetically to this richer 
conception of Christ, not as standing helpless among us, 
himself looking across the chasm of difference between the 
human and the divine, not as removed from us in the 
isolation of a being purely celestial, but as organized with 
us, the Eternal Mediator of that essential kinship be- 
tween humanity and divinity which is perpetually requi- 
site to a vital religion, they are in the line of spiritual 
advance! The larger faith, the higher appraisement of 
his person, fills the soul with moral energy, with fresh 
hope for the race, with magnificent confidence that the 
Kingdom of God can be established on earth through 
the Eternal Headship of Jesus Christ!'* 

After nineteen centuries Jesus Christ remains the 
most dynamic and revolutionary factor in all history, the 
one sinless and perfect character of all mankind, the 
greatest marvel of all time. 

"The high priest asked him, *Are you the Messiah? 
Tell us if you are.' . . *Are you, then, the Son of God?' 
He replied, ^It is as you say; I am.'" 

"Who do people say that I am? . . But you your- 
selves, who do you say that I am?" 



60 Something More 

Who do yow say that Jesus is? A mere man? Or more 
than a man? On what ground do you seek to explain 
him — as a human, or more than a human? The answer 
you give to this question and the place you accord to 
Jesus in your own life will determine the degree of victory 
and power you are to possess. 

The acceptance of Jesus Christ and the earnest en- 
deavor to follow him bring a sense of forgiveness from sin, 
victory over temptation, a feeling of peace and joy, an 
intense longing to serve others. Jesus can turn our weak- 
ness into power. Glycerine by itself is a sticky, inert 
substance. Mixed with sulphuric and nitric acids, gly- 
cerine becomes the powerful explosive, dynamite. By 
ourselves we may be flabby, spineless, helpless men. Let 
the mighty power of Jesus Christ flow into our lives and 
we become his dynamic followers. 

The testimony of those in all ages who have known 
Jesus best and who have followed him most closely is 
that he is the very Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, 
the giver of life abundant and eternal. 

"All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.'* 
*^ Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man 
hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him.'* 
"If any one wishes to follow me, let him deny himself, 
take up his cross, and so follow me.'* "He who believes 
in me will do the work which I do and still greater works 
than these, for I go to the Father." (^The Shorter Bible.**) 



SOMETHING MORE IN LIFE 



*A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesseth/' — Luke 12:1 $- 

*'For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things 
which are not seen are eternal. '' — // Corinthians 4:18, 

*'For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole 
world, and forfeit his Hfe? or what shall a man give in exchange 
for his life?" — Matthew 16:26, 

"Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of 
God.'' — John J : J, 

" For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosever believeth on him should not perish, but have 
eternal life." — John 3:16. 

"The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal 
life in Christ Jesus our Lord. " — Romans 6:2^, 

"This is life eternal, that they should know thee the only 
true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." — 
John 17:3. 

"In him was life; and the life was the light of men." — John 
1:4. 

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life." — John 14:6. 

"He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the 
Son of God hath not the life." — / John 5:12. 

"And ye will not come to me, that ye may have life." — John 
5:40. 

"We know that we have passed out of death into life, because 
we love the brethren." — / John 3:14* 



CHAPTER IV 
SOMETHING MORE IN LIFE 

Of the sixteen definitions of life given In the Century 
Dictionary, three are of interest to us in this discussion: 
"The capacity of an animal or a plant for self-preserva- 
tion and growth by the processes of assimilation and 
excretion, the permanent cessation of which constitutes 
death/* **The principle or state of conscious spiritual 
existence/* "That kind of spiritual existence which 
belongs to God, is manifested in Christ, and is imparted 
through faith to the believer; hence a course of spiritual 
existence devoted to the service of God, possessed of the 
felicity of his fellowship, and to be consummated after 
death.'* There is something more in life, in each of these 
meanings. No man has reached the maximum capacity 
for self-preservation and growth, no man has attained 
the full measure of conscious spiritual existence, no man 
has entered into the deepest communion with God or is 
entirely devoted to his service. 

Many solutions are offered as to how to gain the 
something more in life. The physician, the sanitary 
engineer, and the physical culture director have diagnosed 
the situation and have a solution to offer. The trouble 
is, they say, that man is needlessly sick. For one cause 
or another he is living on a low plane of physical health 
and efficiency. By observing certain simple rules of 
sanitation, diet, rest, sleep, and exercise, many of his ills 
may be abolished. And no one can deny that man is 
living far below his capacity for health and strength. 

63 



64 Something More 

Another group of men is saying, the trouble is eco- 
nomic. The unequal distribution of property and wealth 
is responsible for the woes of man. Poverty makes a 
horrible nightmare of life. What man needs is higher 
wages, shorter hours, a share in the control of business, 
a better home, more conveniences and luxuries, and better 
opportunities for recreation. This is true. If all men had 
more of these things, they would be in a better position 
to enter more deeply into life. 

Still others are saying, the trouble is ignorance. 
What the people need is education. Ignorance makes for 
superstition, unhappiness, and lack of progress. Furnish 
better schools and colleges, better equipped libraries and 
laboratories, better books and periodicals, more art 
galleries and museums, higher grade music, and the 
people will make progress. Education opens up a new 
world and makes possible a deeper enjoyment of life. 
This also is true. It cannot be denied that mankind needs 
better doctors, better economists, and better educators. 
Yet after all these have done their work, much re- 
mains to be accomplished before man is able to ex- 
haust the possibilities of more abundant living. 

Sound health and strong physique are not the essence 
of real life. The classic illustration of physical strength 
is Samson. Yet no one would say that he in his wild 
debauches knew the meaning of life. If a man has 
physical strength alone and seeks only to gratify passion, 
he is a mere brute, and knows nothing of the true values 
of life. 

Life is not mere possession of things. Houses and 
barns, stocks and bonds, gold and diamonds, do not 



Something More in Life 65 

constitute the essence of life. A man may be able to 
count his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars, all 
material luxuries may be his, he may travel far in pursuit 
of known desires, and yet real life may elude him. Here 
IS such a man. His health is wrecked through excesses, 
his moral character is almost gone through debauchery, 
his friends shun him, his wife divorces him, his children, 
despise him. Does he possess real life? Even if all men 
were able to count their wealth by hundreds of thousands 
of dollars this would not usher them into real life. 

Keenness of intellect and brilliancy of thought are 
not the primary distinguishing characteristics of real life. 
The world needs no further proof of this fact. Four years 
of unprecedented warfare and bloodshed are sufficient 
proof. Did not the war lords of Europe, especially of 
Germany, have trained minds and skilled hands? Mental 
culture by itself may become the chief foe of real life. 

Wealth, strength, and keenness of intellect, taken 
separately or together, do not constitute the essence of 
real life. A man may possess these and still be nothing 
more than a walking skeleton, a framework without the 
spark of real life. And, on the other hand, some of the 
men who have impressed their fellows as knowing most 
about life and as entering most deeply into it, have pos- 
sessed neither strength, wealth, nor keenness of intellect. 
It is true that when rightly used these things make a vital 
contribution to life, but they are not its chief factors. At 
its best, life consist of these things, plus something more. 

What the something more in life is may be best under- 
stood by examming the words and deeds of the world's 
best life. In Jesus Christ we see perfection of life. He 



66 Something More 

sounded life to Its depth, and if we were fully capable of 
appreciating him, we should know the essence of real life. 
From an imperfect understanding of Jesus Christ, it 
would appear that real life depends upon the fulfilling 
of three conditions — the dwelling on friendly and affec- 
tionate terms with God, with ourselves, and with our 
fellowmen. 

To be on friendly and affectionate terms with God 
means that we are to seek diligently his companionship, 
to spend time consciously in his presence, to talk with 
him and allow him to speak to us, to try to do what gives 
him pleasure and to leave undone what causes him 
pain, and to allow nothing to stand between us and 
him. 

To be on friendly and affectionate terms with our- 
selves means that we are to overcome the discordant and 
divisive elements within our own natures, to suppress 
our own base and impure thoughts, to bring into expression 
our nobler desires and aspirations, to crucify the flesh 
that we may exalt the spirit, to dwell on the higher and 
not the lower level, to live at our best and not at our 
worst, to develop well-rounded characters. 

To be on friendly and affectionate terms with our 
neighbors means that we are to recognize their intrinsic 
worth, to seek their companionship, to honor and trust 
them, to refrain from unkindly thoughts, words, and 
deeds, to seek to add to their comfort, joy, and power, 
and in every possible way to do them good. 

If we fulfil to any degree these three conditions of 
being in friendly relations with God, ourselves, and our 
fellows, we shall discover something more of the meaning 



Something More in Life 67 

of life. If we do these things we shall really live. The 
important question which confronts us is, How shall we 
be able to enter into this deeper life? Where shall we 
find the power to enable us always to be on friendly terms 
with God and man ? For an answer we cannot do better 
than to turn to the pages of the New Testament. From 
the words and deeds of Jesus and his closest followers, we 
gain our deepest insight into life. 

The first condition of entering into real or spiritual 
life, according to the New Testament, is a new birth. 
"Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom 
of God.'* This is logical. The Kingdom of God is not 
physical or material, it is spiritual. A spiritual birth is 
essential to entrance into the spiritual realm. 

This new birth involves decision and acceptance. 
Physical life is thrust upon us, we have no choice in the 
matter. Not so with the spiritual life. The possession 
of spiritual life involves a conscious choice on our part; 
we may or we may not possess it, depending upon the 
choice we make. To be born anew means a conscious 
turning away from the domination of the lower sensual 
and physical pleasures, and the beginning of a conscious 
search for the higher spiritual values. It means the rec- 
ognition of spiritual realities and a determination to come 
into possession of them. To be born anew means also 
the acceptance of God's offer of forgiveness of the past 
and power for the present and future. Whether we are 
to receive his forgiveness and power depends upon our 
own choice, whether we accept or reject his offer. 

The cooperation of God is limited by the degree of our 
loyalty and conformity to the spirit and teaching of his 



68 Something More 

Son Jesus Christ, the supreme revelation of God on earth. 
This loyalty Involves an open confession of faith in Jesus 
Christ. Jesus adopted the rite of baptism as the symbol 
of this faith and loyalty. Every man who desires the full 
cooperation of God should show his loyalty to God's 
highest revelation by making a public confession of faith 
in Jesus Christ and submitting to Christian baptism. 

Conscious acceptance of Jesus, public confession of 
faith in him, and submission to baptism, are only first 
steps in showing loyalty to Christ. These should be 
followed by implicit trust and obedience. It should be 
emphasized that there is a vast difference between in- 
tellectual beliefs about Jesus and personal trust in him. 

As Dr. John Herman Randall points out: "Faith in 
Jesus Christ is not synonymous with belief in certain 
things about him. One may believe all the orthodox 
doctrines about Jesus Christ, and be in no respect in- 
fluenced by him. What one believes intellectually does 
not necessarily save. But when you come face to face 
with his personality, and feel the constraining influence 
of his life upon you; when you stand in reverence before 
his courage, his purity, his unselfishness, his disinterest- 
ed love, his God-like manliness; when what he was, and 
what he did, calls out in you so intense a faith that you 
can say: T may not understand all the theology, I cannot 
frame all the definitions, I am not able to explain the 
atonement or the incarnation or the trinity, but I know 
that here is a character worthy of my following, worthy 
of my faith, worthy of my best, and I yield myself to 
his leadership, then the real life of faith begins for you. 
Your faith in him is not credulity, it is not hypothesis, it 
is no mere intellectual belief, it is this inner vital force 
by which you launch your life in the direction he points 
out." 



Something More in Life 69 

We must trust Jesus to give us power over weakness 
and temptation — trust him for guidance in all of our 
perplexities — trust him with our lives and our destinies. 

Not only must we be born anew and trust in Jesus 
Christ — we must participate in his work if we are really 
to enter into life. One element of such participation is 
the practice of prayer. We must follow his example of 
setting aside time for definite communion with God. We 
must take time to be alone with God, to enjoy his com- 
panionship, to listen to his voice. 

If the example of Jesus is an adequate criterion, life 
is not complete without participation in intercessory 
prayer. After reminding us of Jesus' words to Peter, "I 
have prayed for thee,'* and Jesus' prayer on the cross, 
*' Father, forgive them," Dr. John R. Mott says: 

**The marvelous objective sweep and content of his 
high-priestly prayer, as recorded in the seventeenth 
chapter of St. John, should convince anyone that Christ 
believed in the power of prayer to accomplish results 
outside the life of the one who prays. If we accept Christ, 
therefore, as our perfect example as well as Teacher in 
other things, logically we should follow him in this most 
vital practice. Does not the reality of our faith in his 
divine character stand or fall with our obedience or 
failure in this wider outreach of prayer? .... The 
fundamental need of the Church today, and of its various 
auxiliary agencies, is not that of money . . . Nor is the 
chief need that of better organization . . . .Moreover 
our greatest need is not that of better plans . . . Neither 
is the primary need that of more workers .... No, 
back of these and other unquestioned needs, is the fun- 
damental need of more Christlike intercessors. This, if 
adequately supplied, will carry with it the meeting of the 
other clamant requirements of our day.*' 



70 Something More 

Participation in the work of Jesus also involves the 
rendering of sympathetic service to our fellowmen. "Who- 
soever would be first among you shall be your servant: 
even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.** 
It was said of Jesus, "He went about doing good." There 
are, of course, a great many ways of rendering Christlike 
service to our fellows. Indeed, it may be said that any 
service which contributes to the well being, uplift, and 
growth of any man is a Christlike service. There is no 
real distinction between a sacred and a secular calling. 
The world sadly needs true followers of Jesus In all pro- 
fessions and occupations — farmers, butchers, bakers, 
lawyers, doctors, statesmen — men with Christlike char- 
acters and an eagerness to serve their fellows. In a day 
when the churches lack real spiritual power and leadership, 
when many are standing still or going backward, when 
masses of men are without spiritual shepherds, there Is 
an overwhelming need for Christian ministers with the 
consecration, wisdom, and affection of Christ. In a day 
when vast continents are relatively pagan, and have only 
a glimmer of God's truth and power, when millions are 
enshrouded In darkness and superstition, engulfed In 
Impurity and wickedness, there Is need that we should 
give more earnest heed to Christ's parting words: "Go 
ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.'* 

If we would enter fully Into the work of Christ, we 
must follow his emphasis upon personal dealings with men. 
We must not expect too much from legislation, social 
service with the masses, or even the preaching of the 
Gospel to large congregations. All of these have their 



Something More in Life 71 

advantages, but they have also their limitations. Nothing 
can adequately take the place of personal effort with 
individuals. The supreme need is not so much for men 
to enter any one profession, as it is that followers of Jesus 
in all professions and occupations should be concerned 
about the moral characters and spiritual welfare of their 
friends and associates, and should seek to win them to 
the higher life, talking naturally and earnestly with them 
about the deeper meaning and purpose of life, pointing 
out to them Christ's power to forgive sin and to give 
victory over temptation. Not until we put forth a stren- 
uous personal effort to win our friends to the higher life 
shall we be able to enter fully into the work of Jesus. 

And yet individual work with individuals is not 
enough. Something more is necessary if we are to enter 
fully into the work of Jesus. Jesus not only changed the 
characters of individuals, he proclaimed the principles 
and laid the foundations upon which the Kingdom of God 
might be built. We must not only seek to change the 
moral characters of individuals, we must make an in- 
telligent and strenuous effort to change our present social 
system. Thought and energy must be devoted to the 
eradicating of all elements in our present system that are 
anti-social and unchristian, and the replacing of them 
with elements that further the well being of all hu- 
manity and hasten the coming on earth of the Kingdom 
of God. 

Loyalty to the Kingdom of God involves an effort 
to apply the principles and ideals of Jesus in political, 
economic, and industrial relations, as well as in personal 
relations. The loyal follower of Jesus will stand in 



72 Something More 

opposition to war as a means of settling differences be- 
tween nations. He will be unalterably opposed to the 
ruthless competition and merciless rivalry of our present 
autocratic and capitalistic system. He will condemn 
vigorously the enslaving of the poor by the rich, the 
oppression of the weak by the strong. He will seek to re- 
place the present Kingdom of Competition and Profits 
by the ideal Kingdom of Cooperation and Service. 

To participate in the work of Jesus is to seek first 
"the kingdom of God and his righteousness. '* 

There is something more in life, now and hereafter. 
Not only does Jesus offer abundant life in this world, he 
gives assurance of eternal life in the world to come. In- 
deed, the eternal life offered by Jesus begins here and now 
and continues throughout eternity. '^For the wages of sin 
is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ 
Jesus our Lord*' — satisfying, abundant life for all time. 

What is life? When do we possess it? Judged by the 
example and teaching of Jesus Christ, real life means 
dwelling on friendly and affectionate terms with God, 
with ourselves, and with our fellowmen. We enter into 
real life by being born anew, by trusting in Jesus Christ, 
and by participating in his work. 



ENEMIES OF LIFE 



"Now the deeds of the flesh are quite obvious, such as sexual 
vice, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, magic, quarrels, dissensions, 
jealousy, temper, rivalry, factions, party-spirit, envy, [murder,] 
drinking bouts, revelry, and the like; I tell you beforehand as 
I have told you already, that people who indulge in such prac- 
tices will never inherit the Realm of God." — Galatians 3:19-21 
(MofFatt). 

'* For out of the heart come evil designs, murder, adultery, 
sexual vice, stealing, false witness, and slander. That is what 
defiles a man."— Matthew 13:18-20 (MofFatt). 

*'OfF with anger, rage, malice, slander, foul talk! Tell no 
lies to one another." — Colossians j;<?, p (MofFatt). 

" For men will be selfish, fond of money, boastful, haughty, 
abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreverent, 
callous, relentless, scurrilous, dissolute, and savage; they will 
hate goodness, they will be treacherous, reckless and conceited, 
preferring pleasure to God — for though they keep up a form of 
religion, they will have nothing to do with it as a force." — // 
Timothy 3:2-3 (MofFatt). 

"They are filled with all manner of wickedness, depravity, 
lust, and viciousness, filled to the brim with envy, murder, 
quarrels, intrigues, and malignity — slanderers, defamers, loathed 
by God, outrageous, haughty, boastful, inventive in evil, dis- 
obedient to parents, devoid of conscience, false to their word, 
callous, merciless." — Romans 1:29-31 (MofFatt). 

"Never be anxious." — Philippians 4:6 (MofFatt). 

"If you do not forgive men, your Father will not forgive 
your trespasses either." — Matthew 6:13 (MofFatt). 

"To men you seem just, but inside you are full of hypocrisy 
and iniquity. — Matthew 23:28 (MofFatt). 



CHAPTER V 
ENEMIES OF LIFE 

There is far more in life than any of us can imagine. 
Wealth untold lies all about us. We have ventured 
scarcely farther than the shallows in the sea of God's 
fathomless wisdom and love. We know only a little of 
the unbounded possibilities wrapped up in our own lives 
and of the vast latent energies in every man we meet. We 
have grasped only a small fraction of the joy, power, and 
meaning of life. 

The tragedy of tragedies is that man continues to 
live in poverty when he might have riches, in weakness 
when he might have strength, in sorrow when he might 
have joy, in despair when he might have hope. These 
things ought not to be. And yet this condition continues 
to exist. What is the matter? Wherein do we find an ex- 
planation of this tragedy? 

Enemies! Enemies of life! They are responsible for 
man's low estate, they have robbed him of his inheritance, 
they have taken his birthright, leaving only a mess of 
pottage. Enemies are at work day and night in the material 
realm. Chief among these are ignorance, carelessness, and 
greed. Operating independently or together, they have 
wrought enormous destruction. 

Consider such an essential thing as land. In the 
United States enough land is wasted in fence corners to 
make the equivalent of two Belgiums. Vast tracts of 
our land produce only weeds. Other peoples could live in 
ease from the products of the land we waste. The present 

75 



76 Something More 

writer had this fact borne in upon him during a recent tour 
in the Orient. These Eastern peoples utilize every foot 
of available soil. One of the common sights in these lands 
is the terraced hill, farmed all the way to the top. In 
England and France also, the writer was impressed by the 
absence of weed patches and idle land. 

It is estimated that in the United States there are 
45,000,000 acres of arid land that could be farmed pro- 
ductively with proper irrigation. An illustration of the 
possibilities in this direction is to be found in the great 
Assuan dam across the Nile, which stores 2,000,000,000 
tons of water, and by means of which 420,000 acres of 
desert land, hitherto barren, have been placed under 
cultivation. It is estimated that in the United States 
there are 77,000,000 acres of swamp land that could be 
reclaimed, and which at a conservative figure would be 
worth $10 an acre. 

Not only do we leave vast tracts of land unused, we 
fail to get the maximum production from the land we do 
cultivate. We farm extensively, and not intensively. 
In the United States we use an average of twenty-eight 
pounds of fertilizer per acre under cultivation; while in 
Europe they use two hundred pounds of fertilizer to the 
acre. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that by scien- 
tific farming, seed selection, rotation of crops, and proper 
fertilizing, the yield of our crops may easily be increased 
from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent. 

Not only so, we waste much of the stuff we raise. 
It is estimated by Mr. H. M. Cottrell, Agricultural Com- 
missioner of the Rock Island Railway, that ninety per cent 
of the food value of cornstalks is wasted, involving an 



Enemies of Life 77 

annual loss of $900,000,000. We are told that twenty per 
cent of the cotton crop is wasted in picking, ginning, and 
baling, and that seventy-five per cent of the fruit pro- 
duced is not consumed. 

These are only a few of the ways in which we waste 
our land and the products of the soil. If this waste, or 
any considerable portion of it, could be eliminated, every- 
one would have plenty and to spare. 

Out of ignorance, men have for centuries tramped 
unconsciously over vast stores of wealth; they have re- 
mained poor when they might have had inexhaustible 
riches. In 1848 in California a man named Marshall was 
making a sawmill on the banks of a stream, when ac- 
cidentally he found gold. By the end of 1849 more than 
100,000 miners had flocked to the scene. The emigrant 
trail in Nevada some twenty miles from the California 
border passed within a few yards of a place afterwards 
known as Comstock Lode. Later more than $500,000,000 
in gold and silver were taken from this lode. The passing 
emigrants, bent on reaching the California mines, were 
totally unconscious of the vast wealth over which they 
were tramping. 

More than 100,000 persons joined the famous ^* Pike's 
Peak or Bust'' expedition, the great majority of whom 
were disappointed in their search for gold. They passed 
over a place just west of Pike's Peak on Cripple Creek, 
from which more than thirty years later gold to the value 
of $200,000,000 was taken. 

An old settler in Kern County, California, Tom Means 
by name, was called "the Apostle of Petroleum," because 
for many years he persisted in prophesying that oil would 



78 Something More 

be found in that county. Strangely enough, he refused to 
dig for oil himself, saying ^^ It is not for me/* Finally, 
he sold his ranch for $2,500, and shortly afterward oil was 
struck in such quantities that the new owner made mil- 
lions out of it. 

In this same county, near Maricopa, a company dug 
for oil, exhausted its resources, and was compelled to sell 
out for a song. After continuing operations for some time, 
the new owners, the directors of the Union Oil Company, 
voted to shut down the plant. When the superintendent 
received this order, he refused to obey it, and kept on 
drilling. When they were down to the last joint of casing, 
the famous Lakeview gusher came in. During the first one 
hundred days this gusher produced oil to the value of 
$2,500,000. For eighteen months it gushed steadily, at the 
rate of 30,000 barrels per day. 

A South African claim was sold for $150 by Mr. F. 
Pepper to Mr. Spalding. On this claim was found the 
Stewart Diamond, of 288 carats, and valued at hundreds 
of thousands of dollars. The Regent Diamond, of 410 
carats, and valued at $2,400,000, was found by a slave 
in the Parteal Mine, in 1701. Concealing it in a bandage 
about his leg, he escaped to the coast. He sold it to an 
English skipper, who murdered him, and who later dis- 
posed of it for $5,000. The largest diamond known, the 
Cullinan Diamond of 3025 carats, insured for $2,500,000, 
was found accidentally high up in the mine face. 

Strangest of all, in 1867, the child of a Dutch farmer 
named Jacobs, in South Africa, was found playing with 
a rock that sparkled. A neighbor became interested, and 
ofFcred to purchase the rock. It was found to be a genuine 



Enemies of Life 79 

diamond, and later sold for $2,500. When this became 
known, all of the farmers began searching for diamonds. 
One man actually found several diamonds embedded in the 
mud walls of his rude hut. Shortly afterward the famous 
Kimberly Mine was discovered. After forty years, this 
mine is still employing 15,000 persons, and diamonds to 
the value of more than $400,000,000 have been taken 
out. 

Not only have we failed to discover rich mines, we 
do not conserve even that which we have found. President 
Van Hise is authority for the statement that, up to the 
end of 1909, there had been wasted in mining in the United 
States more than 2,340,000,000 tons of coal. Eight per 
cent of the coal used in producing light, power, and heat, 
goes up the chimney in smoke. This smoke damages 
property to the extent of $500,000,000 a year. From 
thirty-five to forty per cent of our lead and zinc are wasted 
in mining, concentration, and smelting. Enough natural 
gas, the most perfect known fuel, is wasted daily in the 
United States to supply every city of over 100,000 popula- 
tion. 

We are only beginning to use our mineral by-pro- 
ducts. It was not long ago that coal tar was regarded as 
a nuisance and was thrown away or given to anyone who 
would cart it off. Now it is known to be extremely val- 
uable. Coal tar forms the physical basis for lubricating 
oils, varnishes, roofing, paving, benzene, carbolic acid, 
over 2,000 varieties of dyes of all colors — the total value 
of this dye industry now reaching $250,000,000 a year — 
many kinds of drugs, including thallin, kairin, antipyrin, 
phenacetin, cocaine, stovaine, saccharine — ^which is 500 



80 Something More 

times as sweet as sugar — many different perfumes, inks, 
photo developers, and such high explosives as lyddite and 
mellinite. All of these are produced from black, sticky, 
coal tar, which was formerly regarded as a nuisance. 

Through ignorance and carelessness, we fail to utilize 
the latent power all about us. At the present time most 
of the workshops of the world are driven by power gener- 
ated from the consumption of coal and oil. We are told 
that within a thousand years our total supply of coal 
and oil will be exhausted. Everywhere men are casting 
about for other means of generating power. 

One of the most promising of these substitutes is the 
harnessing of the streams and waterfalls of the land. 
This has been done successfully in many places. Already 
approximately one-fourth of the power of Niagara is 
being utilized. By means of a great dam at Keokuk, Iowa, 
200,000 horse-power is generated. The United States 
Government hydrographers have estimated that the 
streams and rivers of the United States are capable of 
producing 230,800,000 horse-power, almost as much 
as is now produced by all of our coal and oil. A vast 
proportion of this latent power is now being allowed to go 
to waste. 

Since the beginning of time man has been fascinated 
by the resistless movement of the tides of the sea. Only 
recently, however, has man succeeded in harnessing these 
tides. At Husum, on the North Sea, a mechanism is gener- 
ating 6,000 horse-power solely from the tides of the sea. 
There are tens of thousands of miles of coast line over 
which the tides unceasingly sweep in and out. If 6,000 
horse-power has been generated with imperfect machines 



Enemies of Life 81 

at a single spot, how many millions of horse-power are 
now being allowed to go to waste ? 

Among the earliest shrines built by men were those 
erected for the worship of the sun. Repeated efforts have 
been made to discover a means of transferring the heat 
energy of the sun's rays into power houses. This has now 
been successfully accomplished. On the desert near 
Cairo, Egypt, five boilers, 205 feet in length, with channel 
mirrors, were erected. By concentration of the sun's 
rays, much after the fashion of our boyhood experiments 
in setting paper ablaze with a reading glass, twelve pounds 
of steam were generated from each 100 square feet of 
mirror exposed to the sun, with a maximum output for 
an hour of 55.5 brake horse-power. This gives the equiva- 
lent of a ton of coal for each two and a half acres of bright 
sunshine for an hour. There are 585,000,000 square miles 
of the surface of the sun presented to the earth, and each 
square foot of this space emits heat equivalent to 12,500 
horse-power. Who will attempt to compute the waste 
of heat energy from this source? 

Our waste of timber is appalling. Twenty-five per cent 
of the tree is wasted in cutting and hauling. Another 
twenty-five per cent is wasted at the mill, and an ad- 
ditional ten per cent is wasted in the factory. Only three- 
eighths of the tree goes into the finished product. "Not 
less than 50,000,000 acres of forest is burned over every 
year, and forest fires destroy annually an average of 50 
lives and $50,000,000 worth of timber. If the use and 
waste of the forest continues unchanged, all the mature 
timber now standing in the United States will be used up 
by 1965." 



82 Something More 

The waste by fire in the United States in 1917 was 
$250,753,640. This is half as much as the total value of 
all buildings erected in the fifty larger cities of the United 
States during that year. A careful analysis of fire losses 
shows that twenty per cent of the fires are strictly pre- 
ventable, and an additional thirty-seven per cent par- 
tially preventable. Thus through carelessness, we burn 
up each year a third as many buildings as are erected in 
the fifty larger cities of the country. 

In all departments of life, we are consciously or un- 
consciously wasting enormous quantities of valuable ma- 
terials and foods. Coal tar is not the only valuable sub- 
stance formerly wasted. Radium was found in pitch- 
blende, a waste substance. Millions of dollars are now 
being saved by proper use of refuse in the petroleum, pack- 
ing, and other industries. Who knows but that we are 
throwing away vast quantities of materials as valuable 
as coal tar or pitchblende? 

Enemies are at work in the vegetable realm. The 
United States Department of Agriculture estimates that 
insects and pests damage the crops of this country to the 
extent of $900,000,000 a year. The damage done to our 
fruit trees by insects amounts to $650,000,000 each year, 
and the larger part of this could be prevented by proper 
spraying. Rats and other rodents cause a loss to the 
farmers of this country of more than $100,000,000 a year. 
Diseases of live stock are responsible for an annual loss 
of $267,000,000. 

All animals have enemies. All animals are preyed 
upon by parasites. According to J. J. Ward, man has more 
than fifty species of parasites, a frog twenty species, a 



Enemies of Life 83 

bee seventy-four species. Even flies and smaller insects 
are preyed upon. These parasites cause great suffering 
and inflict enormous damage. Many of them may easily 
be eliminated. An outstanding example is the destruc- 
tion of the female mosquito, which was alone responsible 
for the spreading of yellow fever in the Canal Zone and 
elsewhere. 

There is enormous waste in human eflficiency and 
happiness through sickness, accidents, and premature 
deaths. Each year 75,000 people are killed in the United 
States. Professor Irving Fisher estimates that out of one 
and a half million deaths annually in the United States, 
at least 630,000 are preventable. Most persons, through 
neglect and carelessness, are living on a basis of less than 
fifty per cent physical efiiciency. Throughout the hundred 
millions of our population, there is an appalling waste of 
physical life. 

The most tragic waste, however, is in the spiritual 
lives of men. Men who have the capacity for sonship and 
brotherhood are living as aliens and enemies, men who 
have the capacity for companionship are living as hermits, 
men who have the capacity for mighty victories are living 
as helpless slaves, men who have the capacity for service 
are living as parasites. Man is only a small fraction of 
what he might be. 

Man is beset on all sides by enemies. These enemies 
are robbing him of his priceless heritage, of sonship, 
brotherhood, companionship, victory, service. There are 
multitudes of these enemies. Anything which deprives a 
man of real life is an enemy to that man. If real life is 
relationship, the dwelling on friendly and affectionate 



84 Something More 

terms with God and man, then anything which separates 
us from God, from our better selves, and from our fellows, 
is an enemy. 

Another name for this enemy is sin. It is sin that 
wrecks the characters of men and deprives them of their 
spiritual heritage. Sin is the most subtle, treacherous, 
and deadly of all foes. It is the destroyer of real life. 

There are varied ideas as to what constitutes sin. 
Most human practices are regarded as sin by one man or 
another. Actions varying as widely as murder and cigar- 
ette smoking, adultery and playing checkers on Sunday, 
drunkenness and women talking in church, war and wear- 
ing jewelry, blasphemy and playing cards, untruthfulness 
and dancing, robbery and fishing on the Sabbath, cruelty 
and attending the theater, are all looked upon as sin by 
different groups of people. What criterion shall we use 
in determining what is sin and what is not sin? Shall we 
use isolated texts from the Bible as the absolute standard.? 
Shall we be guided solely by such verses as, "Let the 
women keep silence in the churches, '' or "Let it not be 
the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and ot wearing 
jewels of gold"? 

It is significant that the Great Teacher does not draw 
up a code of laws or a list of sins. Nowhere does Jesus 
say explicitly that human slavery is sin, or that the 
employment of little children for fourteen hours a day 
in a factory is sin. He deals in general principles con- 
cerning the great fundamentals of life. So clear is his 
teaching, however, that there can be no doubt as to what 
he thinks of human slavery or the oppression of little 
children. In the teaching of Jesus, life is relationship, 



Enemies of Life 85 

dwelling on friendly and affectionate terms with God, with 
ourselves and with our fellowmen. Anything which de- 
stroys this friendly relationship is sin. By this standard 
any thought or act may safely be judged. 

Let us consider for a moment some of the things which 
separate us from God. Perhaps the first thing which 
occurs to us in this connection is ignorance. The man 
who knows but little of God is not able to dwell on friendly 
terms with him. All men are partially ignorant of God, 
and consequently no man is living on terms of the deepest 
possible friendship with him. A portion of our ignorance 
is our own fault, due to indifference and carelessness to- 
ward God. Ignorance, indifference, and carelessness may, 
therefore, be grouped together as one barrier which sep- 
arates us from God. 

Another barrier is made up of idolatry, irreverence, 
blasphemy, and ingratitude. When these are present it 
is not possible to be on friendly and affectionate terms 
with God. The worshiping of other things, the showing 
of disrespect by thought, word, or deed, and the refusal 
to acknowledge our obligation to him — these things shut 
God out from our lives. 

An even more formidable barrier is erected by open 
rebellion, disobedience, and rejection of God's Son and 
his highest revelation. So long as these things are per- 
sisted in, the deepest friendship with God is impossible. 

In our own inner selves, we find operating the same 
trio — Ignorance, indifference, and carelessness. We are 
ignorant of our own latent capacities, of the degree of 
our likeness to God, of the possibilities of our lives. We 
are indifferent to the higher values and are content to 



86 Something More 

dwell on the lower level of physical appetites and pleasures. 
Even when we recognize to some extent our possibilities 
and when we seek after a fashion to realize them, we 
grow careless, become swamped by the temporary, and 
lose sight of the eternal. 

Selfishness, covetousness, envy, pride, conceit, boast- 
fulness, and hypocrisy divide us from our better selves. 
They lead us to mistake something else for real life. Fear, 
dread, and worry banish love, trust, and peace. They 
are irritants that make impossible the smooth working 
of our better natures. They turn real life into a horrible 
nightmare. Impurity, intemperance, and dissolute living 
blind us to higher values. They soon come to be the only 
things we crave and for them we willingly part with all 
else. They are forerunners of darkness and despair. 
Loss of self-control, anger, rage, and a merciless, relent- 
less, and unforgiving disposition, cause our lower natures 
to become dominant. They enslave and hold in bondage 
our nobler impulses and aspirations. Laziness, half- 
hearted efforts, lukewarmness, prevent absolutely our 
entering into real life. They cause us to be content with 
less than our best and are deadly enemies to any strenuous 
search for real life. 

There are likewise a multitude of enemies that bar 
the way to living on friendly terms with our fellows. 
Ignorance, indifference, and carelessness operate here also. 
A lack of appreciation of the intrinsic worth and latent 
possibilities of every man we meet, indifference to his 
welfare, and carelessness as to his rights and privileges, 
prevent us from living on friendly terms with him. 

Untruthfulness, hypocrisy, insincerity and double 



Enemies of Life 87 

dealing, coldness, hard-heartedness, ingratitude and 
contempt, erect an insurmountable barrier between us 
and our fellows. They destroy confidence and respect 
and prevent all intimate and happy relations. Gossip, 
slander, harsh judgments, bring pain to those who are the 
targets of our words. They cause resentment and bitter 
feelings and destroy amicable relations. Quarrels, jealousy, 
envy, unfair competition, loss of self-control, and anger, 
call forth like responses. They lead to misunderstandings, 
violent actions, unhappiness, misery, and woe. Fear, 
prejudice, and hatred are usually found in groups. We 
hate those persons whom we fear. When fear, prejudice, 
and hatred are harbored, all friendly relations are ban- 
ished. Cruelty, barbarity, maliciousness, murder, violence, 
theft, sexual vice, make us enemies of society. Conse- 
quently, they shut us out from friendly relations with men. 

Thus we have seen that sin is an enemy of real life, 
because it separates us from God, from ourselves, and 
from men. There are other penalties of sin. Sin causes 
suffering to ourselves and to others. Sin dulls moral 
judgment and makes us incapable of right choices and 
noble living. Sin paralyzes the will and makes us slaves 
to our base and impure desires. Sin inevitably brings 
punishment. 

It is when we realize the awful effects of sin and the 
great difficulty of overcoming it, that we appreciate Jesus 
Christ^s offer of pardon and victory over sin. The very 
name of Jesus means, ^^He shall save his people from 
their sins.** He came to seek and save the lost, those who 
are enslaved by sin. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful 
and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 



88 Something More 

from all unrighteousness.'* "There hath no temptation 
taken you but such as man can bear: but God is faithful, 
who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are 
able; but will with the temptation make also the way of 
escape, that ye may be able to endure it/' "My grace 
is sufficient for thee.'' 

The gateways to real life are surrender to Jesus Christ, 
to his ideals, to his manner of life, to his guidance; trust 
in him as a personal friend and Saviour; participation 
in his work of advancing the Kingdom of God. "If you 
know these things, happy are you if you do them." 
If we do these things we shall enter more fully into the 
meaning and purpose of life and shall possess life abundant 
and eternal. 

Are you saying with the apostle of petroleum, "It 
IS not for me?" Are you refusing to dig, while others are 
taking untold riches from life ? Are you tramping hurriedly 
over mines of gold ? Are you unconsciously playing with 
diamonds? 

The riches of life are for you. Every child of God is 
an heir to wealth untold. Claim your heritage! Stop fish- 
ing with minnow hooks along the shallows of life, launch 
out into the deep and let down your net for a draught 1 



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